


watcher of the skies

by exactly13percent



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Corporate Espionage, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Found Family, M/M, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Multi, Robots, THIS IS NOT A CANON FIC., technomagic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2020-05-15 13:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 83,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19296808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exactly13percent/pseuds/exactly13percent
Summary: NEST Solutions is famous for its androids. Seamlessly blending tek and magic, NEST has infiltrated every aspect of modern life, from creating disposable workers to high-end secretary models.Aaron struggles to finish his degree and work as a medic while selling and repairing tek on the side. He has help, though—his roommate and friend Neil manages the shop and security.But Neil isn't exactly human, and when Aaron's twin brother Andrew reappears after two years away, he's not happy about the situation. Fortunately for Neil, there's a bigger enemy to face.One that may do more than force them to work together.





	1. unclear

The inside of the shop is dark. The chipped-away spots on the walls seem blacker than the night; they spread outward like inky spots of tekno-magic.

Aaron is exhausted. He lets his heavy backpack slide from his shoulder; it thumps with a dull clattering noise when it hits the concrete floor. There is a piece of metal protruding from the unzipped body of the bag.

For a moment, Aaron stands there and leans against the peeling paint of the front door. He closes his eyes and exhales slowly.

“Neil.”

There’s a tiny flicker of recognition in Aaron’s mind. An echo—common enough for implants, especially when they are used for communication. The echo feels like a dying lightbulb coming on. Weak but bright. Fragmented.

_“Aaron. You’re back.”_

“Anything happen?”

_“No.”_

Aaron runs a hand over his face. He curves his thumb behind his ear; the implant itches, sometimes. It’s uncomfortable. It’s not meant to be there.

Talking to Neil is never uncomfortable, though. Somehow. 

“What did you do today?” Aaron asks. He forces himself to push his body away from the door and begin to walk inside his shop, toward the stairs at the back that lead to his bedroom.

There’s another echo. Something resembling amusement, Aaron thinks. Neil says, _“The usual. Organized your notes. Did inventory. Why? Did you see something I forgot?”_

“No.” I never do, Aaron thinks, but he keeps his mouth shut while he begins to climb the stairs 

_“You sound tired.”_

“Long day." 

Neil doesn’t say anything, but Aaron can feel an echo of shrewdness. An acute awareness that Aaron is not lying, but isn’t telling the entire truth, either.

If Aaron doesn’t explain, he’ll never hear the end of it.

“Another accident,” Aaron mutters. He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands; spots bloom in the darkness behind his eyelids. “Just a kid. Eighteen.”

Neil is silent. He usually is for a few minutes; Aaron isn’t sure whether Neil takes the time to process, or if he is just…

...quiet.

_“You should take care of yourself.”_

Aaron takes the final step up to his room and pauses in the doorless entryway. The room is a claustrophobic hovel with more books than free space, all medic and tek guides. There is a bed shoved in one corner, the sheets fixed—not how Aaron left it that morning—and the curtains by the barred window are pulled aside. 

There is a small, padded sleeping bag on the ground between the bed and window. That is where Neil sits, his legs extended and his arms hanging loosely at his sides. His eyes are half-lidded, but their blue tek light flickers in the dark.

Neil’s gaze shifts slowly toward Aaron. His mouth is relaxed and set, but Aaron hears him say, _“You look like shit.”_

“So do you.” Aaron shrugs his jacket off and tosses it onto his bed. He toes his shoes off before making his way over to Neil, crouching slowly.

There are so many scars. Bumps, ridges, badly-fused tek and magic knotted in an imitation of flesh. The evidence is almost as bad as what probably happened to Neil in the first place.

Aaron slides his kit closer to his knees and lowers himself onto the ground, seated before Neil, barely an inch separating them. Aaron waits until he is halfway through running a simple diagnostic to ask, “So?”

_“So, what?”_

Aaron exhales through his nose. “Did you remember anything?”

Neil’s eyelids lower a half-centimeter. Either he is thinking, or he is avoiding looking at Aaron. It’s usually the latter.

_“No. Nothing.”_

He never does.

 

♅

 

Aaron wakes with a jolt. He is breathing heavily and his chest rises and falls rapidly, heart pounding. Neil is impatiently knocking on the door of his implant. Aaron lets him in.

_“Took you long enough.”_ Neil almost sounds more worried than annoyed.

Aaron can hardly suck in enough breath. He is still gathering himself when he asks, “What’s going on? What happened?”

_“Someone’s downstairs.”_

Neil’s blue eyes are sharp as they fix on the bedroom door. Aaron shoves his feet into his boots and fumbles around for a weapon. His fingers curl around a wrench.

_“That’s not good enough.”_

“It’ll have to be.”

Neil is probably about to argue. Aaron neatly slides toward the door, wrench clutched to his chest. He doesn’t have to ask Neil to heighten the security system and prepare an alarm. He can feel it loaded like a gun in the periphery of his implant.

It is four in the morning. Aaron bleakly considers that at least he won’t have to be on shift the next day, but it’s been some time since he last slept and he is too exhausted to deal with this.

No one has ever attempted to break in before, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that Aaron isn’t running a real clinic and isn’t licensed to sell any parts. People are desperate, and he has a shop. That’s all they need to know.

Aaron’s right hand slides along the wall as he walks. He grounds himself with it, prepared, and slides into the corner where the door and wall join.

Someone pounds on the door and Aaron nearly has a heart attack. He curls his hand tighter around the wrench and slowly leans to peer out of the wire-covered window.

His face stares back at him.

“God damn it.” Aaron exhales, irritation taking the place of the nervous fear. He tosses the wrench away and unlocks the door, the familiar needle-stab behind his ear telling him security is disarmed.

Andrew barely waits before walking right past Aaron, his leather jacket smelling of rain and motor oil. “Charming place.”

“You would know if you’d come before.”

Aaron should probably not say things like that, but he does, and then Andrew is turning to survey him with dark eyes. “You’re not alone.”

The beat of silence that follows is many things—confusion, realization, panic. Fear. Aaron is too late when he says, “What?”

Andrew moves toward the staircase. Aaron follow hot on his heels, passing him to wait on the bottom stair. “Hold the fuck up. You just show up—”

“Move.”

“Andrew. You can’t just—”

“I said, move.”

“Wh—”

Andrew reaches out to take Aaron’s arm away from the stairwell it blocks, but suddenly he can’t—

—and there is Neil, his blue eyes crackling as his arm blocks Andrew from coming closer. His head is just next to Aaron’s, expression passive despite the clear warning he poses.

“I wouldn’t.”

Aaron wonders if he will die between Andrew and Neil.

Andrew’s expression twists into a parody of a smile—something with teeth, but absolutely devoid of joy. “Oh. What is this?”

“Don’t,” Aaron says. It is more of a plea than a warning. He knows better. He also knows he should say something to Neil. “He’s fine. Just—”

“Oh, no. No, this is far too interesting. Keep it around,” Andrew says. His grin looks like more of a grimace. “Tell me, little robot boy. Did my brother make you because he was lonely?”

Neil is silent, as usual, and Aaron thinks he might not say anything—but Neil opens his mouth and carefully replies, “No one made me.”

Whatever complicated tango Andrew is trying to lure Neil into, Aaron doesn’t care. The last thing he wants is for the entire encounter to implode in his face. “All right,” he says. “Whatever. He’ll stay. Just tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Why? Am I bothering you? Is this inconvenient?” Andrew imitates concern, waving a hand toward the door as if he will leave.

The problem is, Aaron worries that he will. He always did, right up until Andrew left.

So, Aaron has to swallow everything and instead say, “No. I just want to be sure I know what I’m dealing with.”

“Oh, it’s just me,” Andrew says, the sarcasm sharp on his tongue. “You only have to deal with me.”

Aaron rubs a hand over his face. He’s exhausted and he doesn’t want to be awake. He doesn’t want to be doing this.

Again.

But he does, because of course he does. “There’s a couch down here. The—”

“Really? So, has it been sleeping with you?”

There is something bitter on Aaron’s tongue. He should know better than to respond or snap; he should know that Andrew is looking for a weak spot. For information he knows Aaron won’t give.

It’s not Aaron that replies, though. It’s Neil, with his arm still casually extended and his blue eyes staticky. “Yes, I have. Does that bother you?”

Andrew’s smile curves a little more sharply. “I think this will be fun.”

Aaron doubts it.

 

♅

 

Neil doesn’t sleep. Not exactly.

There’s always a flickering awareness—tension, preparation, and perhaps some paranoia. Neil thinks he has a good reason to be paranoid. It’s written all over his body.

The night that Andrew appears, Neil does not sleep at all. He lays on his makeshift bed in the corner, head turned toward the door. He usually drifts; his tek is integrated enough for him to slide between physical awareness and a sort of disembodied exploration. This night, Neil lets the systems take a back seat to his thoughts.

Aaron found him. He really shouldn’t have, but he did, and that is why Neil manages the shop security and just about everything else.

Also Neil can’t sit still for long, and given his current physical restraints, allowing his mind to work overtime is the best solution.

Aaron is asleep. Neil glances over him—small frame, compact but athletic. Pale hair and lashes, green-brown eyes hidden behind closed eyelids. Faint color in his lips. A furrow between his eyebrows.

He is a good person. A better one than Neil deserves.

That is not something Neil wants to dwell on, now. He has other things to contemplate, like Andrew’s sudden appearance and what it might mean.

Neil has never met Andrew. He knows of him, in the way that pulling teeth and learning about one another are the same for Neil and Aaron. Andrew is an aching tooth, and Neil only had to tug to figure that out. He never pushed it and he never wanted to.

All Neil knows about Andrew fits into one-billionth of his storage space. Andrew is Aaron’s twin; they were separated at birth; they met once again later in life, with as much rockiness and disaster as was to be expected.

Andrew left, after a few years and a few disasters. Left to do something.

Neil doesn’t know what happened. He needs to know, if he is going to protect Aaron from his own missteps.

So, he falls.

 

♅

 

Falling into the web. That is what Neil calls it, and when Aaron argued that it was more like a net, Neil had simply given him a silent look.

It is a web, the tekno-magic lattice that contains the world’s information and systems. Each time Neil dives in, he comes out sticky, parts of himself trapped in places he would rather not return to. Neil avoids falling as much as humanly possible.

There’s always something sneaking up on him, though. Always a self-imposed loyalty or choice that means he is standing at the edge of his mind, staring into the black abyss beyond his feet.

Neil stares into the darkness and runs.

At first, he is running. Then there is nothing—no ground beneath his feet and no sensation. No thoughts, no self, no being. He is in the endless, and then he feels his being thrown into a chasm. He falls, bits of his mind catching like a sweater on a ragged door frame. All Neil can do is clutch himself close and pray he isn’t torn apart.

Some time later, indeterminate, Neil stops falling. He pulls himself forward like a fly in glue and reaches toward what he needs to find. He has a body now; a body that is strangely whole and human. He can walk through what feels like a giant spiderweb, tugging at threads as he goes.

By now, Neil knows where to find things. By now, he has forced the web into something he can understand—a room with many houses. A dim basement where the walls are doors.

Neil runs a hand over a door with graffiti and chipped blue paint. There is loud music pounding behind it. He cannot feel the sensations, exactly; they are more like thoughts he has, because none of this is real.

Andrew wouldn’t leave a trail, Neil thinks. He paces to the left, passing a few more doors. He stops at one with metal and spikes overlapped, large rivets dotting the perimeter. There are lights flashing from the gaps in the hinges. Neil turns the knob and a needle punches through his heart that isn’t there.

This place is clean and blue. The data flies by, numbers and details and mugshots. It’s one of Neil’s least favorite places to be. He tries not to think about the things whispering in his ear about _kidnapped_ and _murder_ and other, disgusting crimes. Neil inquires after a name—

— _Andrew_ , he whispers, and then the system begins to wail.

The sirens and screams culminate in a flurry of reports and details, information slipping beneath Neil’s nonexistent fingers. He sees an incident report; he finds referrals and admittance dates.

All of it is pointless data. Pointless, but it helps Neil to find his footing.

He leaves feeling dirty.

 

♅

 

Aaron is awake. He blinks slowly, eyes unfocused and face turned toward the obscured window. He doesn’t speak at first, turned on his side and sheet pulled up to his chin.

“He’s still here.”

_“Yes.”_ Neil is saving his energy. He wants to be upright and mobile while Aaron handles Andrew.

The bed creaks when Aaron rolls out. He sighs and pushes his hair away from his face. He looks like he usually does after his first day off shift; exhausted, sluggish, and ready to go back to sleep.

“I’m going to shower.” Aaron tugs clean clothes from a half-open suitcase by his bed. He starts to walk past Neil and toward the tiny door adjacent to the window. “Don’t get into a fight.”

Neil reaches out to tap Aaron’s calf as he walks by. Aaron pauses, hesitating before he crouches as if he is worried Neil will fall apart. “What?”

“I’ll look out for you,” Neil says. His mouth is sticky when he speaks, but at least he hasn’t forgotten how.

The look on Aaron’s face says he understands the significance. It also says he doesn’t want Neil in the middle of anything.

Neil ignores him and bumps his forehead against Aaron’s. _“Go shower. You smell.”_

 

♅

 

“N—”

“I hope you are about to say my name, because I am going downstairs with you.”

Neil stares passively back at Aaron. His joints feel sticky from sleeping upright; he rotates his arm slowly, feeling the tek and magic spark like static.

Aaron’s lips press into a thin line. “Fine.”

Neil already knows where Andrew is. The security system methodically updates him; Neil knew the minute Andrew awoke and began to roam the downstairs shop.

Aaron leads the way. Neil lingers close by, watching. Andrew is by one of the junk shelves, pale fingers drifting over an ancient motherboard. He traces the edges of a few different scraps, sedate, his eyes unfocused.

Neil can tell that Aaron is impatient and unsettled, but he also knows that Aaron will never interrupt.

Neil doesn’t have the same attitude.

“Wander too close to the batteries and you’ll have connection issues with your implant.”

Andrew turns, a catlike grin spreading across his face. It is little more than a twist of his mouth; he’s not really happy. Neil doesn’t need his chemical sensors to know that. “And there it is. I hope you were plugged in and charging last night. You’ll need the energy.”

“Why? Are you going somewhere?” Aaron interrupts, tense.

“I didn’t say that.” Andrew steps away from the shelves, hands in his pockets. Something tells Neil he has weapons in them. “But first, breakfast. Whatever you have for me, and some motor oil for your pet.”

“I’m not a pet.” Neil gives Andrew a considering once-over before turning away, toward the kitchen. “And I eat the same way you do. Just not as much.”

The twin footsteps that follow Neil sound like the ticking of a clock to him. He knows Andrew is not stupid; he is Aaron’s brother and besides, Andrew does not seem like the type to back down. Andrew is going to ask what Neil is soon and there will only be two choices.

Either Neil will answer or he will suffer. And if he suffers, something tells him Aaron will suffer just the same.

The kitchen is tucked away in a room beneath the second-floor bedroom. The door is beneath the staircase; Aaron once joked that if someone taller were to visit, they would probably hit their head. It was a good thing height wasn’t his strong suit.

Aaron might be a medic, but he simply doesn’t have the money to eat the best food or buy the best furnishings. The dishes are mismatched and the mugs hanging from hooks by the oven are chipped and worn. They are theirs, though. Aaron’s and Neil’s. That makes them good.

Aaron is a fair cook, but Neil has access to the entire web in a very intimate way. He usually cooks. Besides, Aaron is exhausted when he comes home, and Neil does his best to ensure Aaron doesn’t have to do much after his shifts.

“It cooks,” Andrew says, amused. “What other tricks did you program into it?”

“I didn’t program him,” Aaron replies, slamming a mug onto the counter with more force than necessary. Neil glances sideways at him, attempting eye contact. Aaron is too irritated to notice.

“So, what? Store-bought escort?” Andrew leans back in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, his shoes propped on the nearby counter.

Neil considers sticking a knife in Andrew’s shoe. He settles on pointing and waiting until Andrew removes his feet, miming a false apology.

“He is not an escort.” Aaron is practically speaking through gritted teeth. Andrew is getting to him. Neil taps Aaron’s elbow while he breaks eggs with his other hand.

Aaron looks at Neil. _“Don’t let him get to you. It’s not bothering me,”_ Neil says. Aaron’s mouth squashes even flatter.

Neil should have known better. Aaron isn’t going to listen. He’s too pissed.

More than Neil deserves.

Andrew rises from his chair, sauntering over to Neil. He looks down at the French toast Neil is making, stirring the egg wash at Neil’s wrist with a lazy hand. He is going to say something stupid, Neil thinks, and this will all end badly.

He didn’t even get to finish making breakfast.

“So tell me, robot,” Andrew muses. “When you watch my brother, do you send your data over the web? Share it with your friends? The company that made you? Or do you just watch it when you think he’s asleep, and imagine you’re a real boy?”

Neil would laugh. He would—it’s such a crude, harsh threat disguised as a simple question. It is equal parts concerned and posturing. Andrew has no real upper hand here; he is asking because he wants to see Neil react. Because he thinks that will tell him everything he needs to know.

It would be a long game if Neil were to play it. A game of evading Andrew and avoiding confrontation, until one of them grows impatient or frustrated enough to snap.

But Aaron won’t give them the chance. He is the one that snaps, rounding on Andrew with a spark of indignation in his eyes. “Don’t fucking start, Andrew. His name is Neil, and he’s perfectly fucking real. More than you’ve been the past two years. More than you’ve been my entire life.”

That hurts. It hurts to hear it—hurts to know. Hurts that Neil knows Aaron is aware what kind of misdirection he is creating, and that if—when—Andrew finds out, it’s just another thing that will drive them apart.

But Aaron does it anyway, and Neil wishes he was able to cry.

Andrew’s expression is shuttered. There is a cold, dead disconnect in his gaze when he turns away from Neil. “Be careful what you say. You do not know anything, Aaron.”

“And neither do you.” Aaron holds Andrew’s gaze. “He has done more for me than anyone else ever has. You don’t get to come into my home and threaten him. He’s saved my life. And even if he hadn’t, he’s been here.”

Unlike you, Aaron doesn’t say, but Neil and Andrew both hear it. Neil quietly finishes transferring breakfast onto plates, waiting for the fire to burn itself out.

Andrew is going to ask, or he is going to find out. He will pick Neil apart piece by piece—

—and Neil will let him.

Because Aaron deserves a brother. Because Aaron deserves to live his life, and he deserves to be happy, without looking after a dying human-machine that has never been anything more than a distraction.

If he had a heart, Neil would love Aaron. But he doesn’t. So all he can do is this.


	2. d.o.a.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew is an invading presence. Aaron doesn't have a choice; he leaves Andrew and Neil alone when he returns to work. Unfortunately, something brings them all together before Aaron's shift is up.

Aaron is putting off going to work. Neil knows this; he counts the extra hours until it is morning and Aaron rolls out of bed, lips pulled into a thin line.

Andrew is still somewhere downstairs.

_“You have to go at some point.”_

“I don’t have to.”

There’s that stubbornness. Neil thinks it is a Minyard trait, especially after having Andrew watch him like a hungry cat for three days.

_“Okay. But then where are you going to get the credit to buy new parts?”_

It’s a little manipulative. Just a little bit, though. Neil is right. Without money, Aaron can’t buy anything. He can’t keep the shop open.

He can’t work on Neil.

Aaron paces away from his bed and comes to crouch before Neil. There’s a line between his pale brows; Neil extends his hand to press a finger to it. Aaron catches his wrist before he gets far. Aaron’s hand shifts; slides, curling fingers through Neil’s. “Call me. If he—”

_“He won’t.”  
_

He might.

There’s a beat of silence. Neil examines their intertwined hands. _Touch._ He can feel; Aaron has rattled off numbers before, some millions of receptors and the extra interfacing that humans just don’t have.

Neil could feel Aaron’s heartbeat from a room away. He listens to it now, the same way he does when he tries to sleep at night. It’s fast.

_“Don’t worry about me. I can handle him.”_

Aaron rises, weary, his hand reluctantly trailing away from Neil’s. “No one can handle him.”

♅

Andrew is chewing on something shiny and red when Neil and Aaron come downstairs. For a second, Neil thinks it is a wire and he considers what would happen if Andrew electrocuted himself.

He thinks Aaron might stare at Andrew for a few seconds before administering aid.

Andrew doesn’t say anything. Aaron comes to stand before him, fingers curling and uncurling around the strap of his bag. “Don’t touch anything in the shop.”

Andrew’s hand slowly extends toward a nearby shelf.

“No,” Aaron says sharply. “I’m serious. It’s all I fucking have.”

Andrew stops. _Interesting._ His eyes slide toward Neil, gaze placid. “Is it really?”

Aaron sighs, an exhale just as cutting as the gesture he makes. “I have to go to work. I’ll be back late. Early tomorrow morning. There’s leftovers.”

“Yes, mom.”

Aaron stares. Neil has a good idea of what he’s about to do and he almost says something but it’s worth it to see the look on Andrew’s face when Aaron turns and pulls Neil into a hug.

Neil is a little taller, so Aaron always tilts his head into Neil’s shoulder so Neil can put his chin on Aaron’s head. They fit together like awkwardly notched puzzle pieces, a little misshapen but mostly perfect. Familiar.

Comfortable.

Andrew snaps his licorice in half.

♅

He’s a weird fucking robot.

Neil pads around the house in shorts that are too obscenely short and a shirt that is cropped just above his ribcage. He didn’t wear the getup the first time Andrew met him, when the robot appeared in the staircase—then, he was wearing a shirt that was Aaron’s.

Who knows if he was wearing anything else.

Aaron isn’t the type of person that looks for comfort in someone else. Distraction, maybe. Not comfort.

But Aaron takes comfort in Neil. That much is obvious. If it wasn’t the hug that told Andrew, it was Neil wearing Aaron’s shirt or Aaron turning into Neil’s touch when they washed the dishes after dinner.

The real question is why. Why Neil.

“You aren’t supposed to touch,” Neil says.

Aaron pauses, the pencil in his hand stilling as the eraser presses against a deconstructed motor. He looks up and finds Neil in the doorway to the shop, his cropped shirt abandoned for another one of Aaron’s shirts.

_What is he, a dog? Can’t be without even the smell of—_

“I’m not,” Andrew bites out.

Neil raises an eyebrow. He has a strange face; blue tek-magic scars spreading from below his left eye. Andrew can see other scars beneath his clothes and on his exposed not-skin. An incision across his chest and down his torso. Lines at his arms. Ankles.

Andrew wonders if those are from maintenance, or if someone made him in cobbled-together pieces.

Neil doesn’t look like he was cobbled together.

“If you aren’t careful, you could curse yourself,” Neil says. He stands by the workbench and then levers himself onto it, sliding his ass along the surface until he sits cross-legged.

 _Who the hell made his legs, anyway?_ It doesn’t make sense that someone would make a robot pretty.

“You don’t think I am?” Andrew prods a bunch of cables with the pencil in his hand. They blink weakly, white light pulsing. “What if I’m immune? Charmed?"

“You’re not,” Neil says simply, as if that is all he needs to say.

Andrew turns. “And how do you know?”

“I can tell.” Neil tilts his head a little. “You’re something. Not cursed, though. Just...marked.”

Andrew drops his pencil onto the table. It clatters woodenly and rolls toward Neil’s thigh. “Don’t use that word.”

Neil stops the pencil with a finger. “Okay.”

It is not that simple. Andrew knows it is not. He walks around the side of the table and watches Neil, thinking. “What is it that you do?”

“Aside from sleep with Aaron?”

It’s a challenge. A clear jab meant to get under Andrew’s skin. Andrew lets his mouth pull into a razor-edged thing that looks like a smile might, if a smile fell into a blender. “Aside from that.”

Neil shrugs and picks something up that looks like a hard drive. “I help with security. I monitor the outside and inside of the shop. I help with services when we’re open.”

Whatever Neil is doing with his hands is working. The hard drive glows softly, little flickers of light illuminating the tek components. After a few minutes, Neil tosses it into the air. It is so fast that Andrew does not see it, but he knows it happened because there’s a streak of magic lingering in the air. The trail is vibrant blue, the color of Neil’s scars.

The color of his eyes.

“So?” Neil looks over at Andrew, those same blue eyes measuring him up.

_What else does he see?_

“So, you watch the store. You like invading my privacy?”

Andrew comes to stand before Neil. He leans against that table, palms pressed to its surface. Neil doesn’t seem to mind; his posture is open, though a small flicker in his lights tells Andrew that Neil is prepared. “I haven’t.”

“Oh? But then how have you been keeping an eye on the store for Aaron?”

“It’s fine, I just used a profanity filter. It made you into a black rectangle.”

“So, the robot picked up an attitude from Aaron! We’ll see how long you manage to keep your spine.”

“Don’t say that,” Neil says quietly.

“What? Attitude?”

Neil shifts and slides off the table. He does not elaborate, but Andrew knows. He knows the same way he knows Neil didn’t explain because he didn’t mean to say anything in the first place.

_So, the robot doesn’t like being called a robot._

Andrew is about to say something when Neil suddenly goes still, his eyes widening; the blue in them bleeds outward, a hazy glow that dusts a sheen of color over his cheekbones.

It’s unsettling.

Neil is there, but he’s not _there_. Something about him seems empty; seems more like the cashier bots at convenience stores and less like…

... _Neil._

Andrew should not know what Neil is like, but he thinks he might. Enough to know when Neil returns to himself, a little inhale telling Andrew that he wasn’t breathing for a few minutes. That he didn’t need to.

“Hm. There was an accident.”

“There are always accidents. What was that?” Andrew asks, arms crossed over his chest.

Neil is already walking away. He takes the stairs two at a time and comes back faster, a haze of blue color trailing behind him. There is black cloth in his hands. “Not like this. It was big.”

Andrew watches as Neil brings his leg up, balance perfect. He slides a stocking-like boot onto his foot and then braces his leg on the table, rolling the rest of the fabric up towards his shorts. When it’s close, he pulls down a small black elastic and attaches it to the fabric.

_He’s seriously wearing thigh-highs._

Neil pulls his other shoe-sock on and bounces on the balls of his feet. The bottoms glow briefly and Neil starts to stretch, pulling one arm toward the opposite shoulder.

“What exactly do you think you can do? You have a limited battery.”

Andrew notices the way Neil pauses. He files the reaction away and adds, “I am not stupid. Aaron seems very concerned about you using up your energy to walk and talk.”

“It costs money for me to live,” Neil says shortly. It is not a lie but it doesn’t have the ring of truth either. Andrew doesn’t believe him. “Of course he cares. He’s barely got enough money to get through school.”

 _That’s not right._ It is not right because Aaron got half the money; Andrew made sure of it.

_So what happened to the money?_

Neil tosses a jacket on that looks suspiciously like part of Aaron’s work uniform. “Are you coming?”

“You think I would risk my life for strangers.”

“No.” Neil turns and fixes Andrew with an even stare. “Aaron will be there.”

♅

Neil is faster than most humans. He is supposed to be faster; much faster.

He ran enough to know how fast he can go when his life depends on it.

The bag on Neil’s shoulder would be heavy to anyone else. It is weighed down with the necessities; med kit, tek kit, water. There are other things in it, too—special things like motors and curse-holds. Ways to suspend tek and magic, and buy time for Aaron to do his work and save lives.

Neil has a secondhand knowledge of simple med aid. He has firsthand knowledge of tek aid.

Andrew walks alongside Neil, just as pale as his brother but different.

 _I told the truth when I said he was marked._ There is an obvious something, like a smudge on a clean window. A bloodstain on a white shirt.

Something happened and Andrew still has it with him.

Perhaps they are a man, a not-robot, and their collective bloodstains.

The accident looms before them and real, deep red pools are visible on the street and sidewalk. The city, otherwise a canvas of neon, is black and white with scarlet splashes. Every shopfront is closed and every building is cordoned off, police holo tape glowing orangey-yellow along the perimeter of the skyscrapers.

It is unclear what happened. It could be something like a derailing, or a hijacked truck. It doesn’t matter to Neil right now.

Nothing should matter to him; going out less so. He has to hide.

But Aaron is here and he needs what Neil has. He may need more, if the scene is dangerous.

There is a black-clad officer on the street. There are several patrolling the tape, but one Neil recognizes immediately.

“Seth.”

Seth looks tired. He usually does; he’s always given the worst shifts. Ever since he ran his mouth to the Chief of Police.

Neil has always admired him for that.

“Hey. He hasn’t called for you,” Seth says. One of his eyebrows raises, the piercing at its tail blinking gold. _Style,_ Seth had said, when Neil asked why he had his communicator embedded in a piercing.

Neil shrugs. “He will.”

Seth shakes his head. He turns a little to look off at the accident—a few yards away the glass begins, a fine dust that turns into bigger pieces of shattered mess. Blood and steel. Plastic.

“It’s bad.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Seth looks over Neil’s shoulder. His expression is suddenly shuttered; he crosses his arms tighter over his chest. “Why is he here.”

Not really a question. “Andrew?”

“Yeah. That one.”

It’s odd. Neil hasn’t heard Seth talk about anyone like this; not since he was angry. _Well, angrier._

“He showed up three days ago. Aaron’s been trying to figure out why.”

Seth’s mouth twists. He hesitates, as if he is weighing what or how much to say. Neil almost prompts him to explain, but then Seth’s communicator crackles. A faint gold hue passes over Seth’s eyes and then he flicks his head irritatedly.

 _“Seth,”_ Aaron says. _“I”m going to need Neil."_

Neil waits for Seth’s eyes to clear before he smiles a little and says, “See? Told you he’d call.”

♅

At one point, he had to learn how to handle it.

Blood, bone, organs.

The worst part for him was always the hair, though. Especially when it was...somewhere else.

Aaron wipes his hair away from his face with his arm. It’s relatively clean, so far. He’s not far in. From the first few feet, it’s simple; cuts, stitches, maybe sprained ankles. Some head wounds that bleed.

He knows it will get worse the closer he comes to the center.

Aaron considers calling Seth again, just to ask if he can rush Neil. Things are bad enough as it is and the emergency response is stretched thin. _Just another accident in NeDis,_ someone said. No one cared about the Neon District.

Certainly not anyone important.

Neil was in bad shape when Aaron found him. It was different, though. _Less blood, maybe._

_More horror._

A soft melody echoes in Aaron’s mind. He looks up quickly and sees Neil there, as if the thought conjured him up. _Whole._ The police lights behind him make his hair redder and his lights bluer.

“You called.”

Aaron watches Neil crouch next to him. Aaron isn’t sure what to say yet. Neil doesn’t press; he never does. He understands.

He’s seen a lot of Aaron’s bad scenes.

“You left before I called,” Aaron realizes suddenly.

“Yeah.” Neil pats the bag on his shoulder. “I brought everything.”

Aaron nods. He glances at the figure behind Neil but can’t bring himself to really commit. All he can do is say, “You shouldn’t be here. You don’t need to see.”

“Neither does he.” Andrew jerks his head toward Neil.

Neil hangs his arms over his knees. He does not look away from Aaron when he says, “I help him. I need to see.”

Aaron manages to stir himself. He pushes at his hair with his arm again, irritated. “There’s a lot to do. Stay close and try not to step on glass, it’ll be a bitch to get out of your fibers.”

Neil nods sagely and stands. Aaron almost turns away and then Neil holds a hand up, inquiring. Aaron frowns but waits while Neil reaches out.

 _You’ll get blood on you,_ Aaron almost says, but it’s too late. Neil pushes Aaron’s hair back neatly, a thin band snugly fitting over Aaron’s head. Aaron can already hear the soft music feeding from the little discs pressing behind his ears. A familiar song.

“Home?” Aaron inquires, his lips flickering.

Neil mirrors his expression, a tiny glimmer of relief in his eyes. “Home,” he agrees.

♅

It’s easier with Neil around.

Not easy. But easier.

There are broken bones. A few pseudo-amputations while Aaron preps some of the victims for transportation to the hospital. There are improvised life support patients and others given a time and a body bag.

Eventually, Aaron is redirected like the flow of a weak stream. He speaks with someone but doesn’t remember who, is given directions and time off, and finds himself suddenly standing at a sink while water pours over his hands.

“I’ll just shower when I’m home,” Aaron says, but Neil washes his hands anyway.

When he’s dropped off, Aaron realizes he’s been staring at his hands, and he knows why Neil washed them.

Andrew goes into the kitchen. Maybe he can’t see Aaron like this, or maybe he doesn’t want to.

Maybe he is grudgingly giving Neil ground.

Neil takes Aaron upstairs and starts the shower. It steams almost immediately and Aaron feels as if the condensation sliding down his skin is just so much more sweat. Or—

—he turns and vomits into the toilet.

It’s not his first time being at a bad scene. He’s seen worse. But it lingers at the back of his mind, some image of a tek limb mangled, cords and cables sputtering fluid on the ground, no real evidence of the damage done except for a neatly wrapped body nearby.

Aaron remembers himself as Neil’s fingers comb through his hair. “Come on.”

The shower feels good. It feels amazing, really; enough that Aaron doesn’t notice he is undressed or when he was undressed. Neil has shampoo in his hands and he does his work slowly, blue eyes patiently fixed on Aaron’s head.

“You’re going to have to clean your joints,” Aaron mutters. He closes his eyes when Neil tilts his head toward the spray of the water.

Neil hums. “It’s worth it.”

_It’s not._

Neil does a lot. Looks after the shop. Looks after the food.

Looks after Aaron.

Neil sees all the same things but maybe he doesn’t see them the same way. Or maybe seeing his own body strewn about in pieces makes him different. Maybe being forced to stay alive, but only just barely, changes the way he sees.

“Don’t go,” Neil says quietly. Aaron imagines he can feel Neil’s breath against his cheek, even with the water pouring over it.

“I’m still here,” Aaron says. The same exchange, just like always. Just like when it’s the worst.

Neil keeps pulling him back gently and Aaron doesn’t think he could ever imagine he saved Neil. Not even if he fit together the broken pieces and mended the sliced-off limbs. Neil is the one that keeps grinding himself down with the accidents and life at home.

He’s the one running out of time every minute of every day.

Aaron taps the center of the y-incision on Neil’s chest. Somewhere beneath it is Neil’s heart, or at least the thing that functions as his heart. The tekno-magic knot of life that keeps Neil upright for most of the day.

It is going to run out and Aaron can’t replace it.

Not without money and not without time. Neither of which they have.

Neil’s hand slides over Aaron’s. He pushes it toward the side of his neck, right where Aaron can feel his pulse. _“I’m not dead yet.”_

_“No. You’re not.”_

But he could be soon. And Aaron doesn’t know if he can stop it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhhhhhh
> 
> I'll be having surgery later this month so I may be late on my update the week of the 22nd. Who knows.
> 
> Hel


	3. sutures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tension between Neil and Andrew is reaching a breaking point. Aaron made a promise and he cannot ignore it. One way or another, Neil knows he will have to give himself up again.

Andrew makes a point not to say anything, but it’s difficult to keep his silence when Neil trails after Aaron toward the upstairs shower.

Still.

Even after years apart, Andrew knows Aaron. He knows him thoroughly—knows his weaknesses and strengths. Andrew knows that Aaron is stubborn to the point of blindness sometimes. He knows that Aaron can dig his heels in and refuse to budge even when he is bleeding out from the resistance of pulling at the ties binding him.

Andrew also knows that Aaron takes comfort in useless distractions. Things that don’t matter, like studying when their world was falling apart. Like allowing the bruises and slaps just for the sake of a few peaceful moments when he could pretend he had a mother.

The thing is, Neil is not some useless distraction. Not in the same way. There is something about him and his imitation of caring that Aaron can lean into; Andrew saw it at the accident, when Neil brushed Aaron’s hair back. When Aaron seemed to relax when Neil appeared.

Andrew lines up three plates and slaps bread onto them. The contents of the fridge are haphazardly shoved onto every available surface. Andrew takes a knife from the block on the counter and slices what looks like cold chicken into manageable pieces before dropping them onto the bread.

He remembers one time that Aaron had a sandwich. He remembers everything that was in it. If he closes his eyes, he could see the entire scene. Remember it.

He doesn’t.

Andrew focuses on the sandwiches and not on the fact that Aaron and Neil are in the shower upstairs.

He  _ knows  _ they are. He could give Aaron the benefit of the doubt but it would be wasted. Andrew saw the way Neil guided Aaron up the stairs. He knows the routine and familiarity when he sees it. He would be lying to himself if he pretended Neil was just sitting outside the bathroom waiting for Aaron, charging near the bed.

He doesn’t care.

Andrew knocks a pickle jar sideways with his elbow and a sharp motion. It bounces and rolls into the stainless steel sink, a hollow thumping and metallic slide echoing in the empty kitchen while the pickle jar traces a wobbly parabola.

The water upstairs stops and Andrew stabs a pickle slice with the knife in his hand. He eats it off the tip, the salty-sour-sweet tang sharp on his tongue.

Aaron enters the kitchen a few seconds later. He seems more alive, either from the way the blood is scrubbed from his skin or the pink flush to his cheeks.

Andrew does  _ not  _ think about what that means.

“I’m still the one that knows how to cook,” Aaron says. He crosses his arms as he stands by Andrew’s elbow and assesses the sandwiches.

Andrew points his pickle-laden knife at Aaron. “I’m still the one with perfect memory.”

Aaron scowls. It’s halfhearted at best; he is still dragging himself out of whatever cave he hid in when he set a child’s broken arm at the scene of the accident. “Why did you come?”

“You think I would have stayed.”

It’s not a question; it’s more of a reminder. Aaron knows Andrew. He knows about promises and understandings.

Andrew’s protection has not run through its warranty. Aaron knows that.

“They happen all the time,” Aaron finally says wearily. He takes the sandwich Andrew shoves at him and picks the crust on one edge off. “There’s been worse.”

“Worse lately.”

“Yeah.” Aaron takes a bite and chews it slowly. He looks toward the window above the sink; it’s covered with a fine tek-steel layer. It’s enough to withstand some bullets but  transparent enough that Andrew can see the dirty streets outside.

There are tiny symbols carved into the window frame. Andrew wonders if it was Neil that charmed the house or Aaron.

“Why is he allowed to come to the scene? This isn’t the first time he’s been at one.” Andrew turns to watch Aaron’s face. He wants to see how much of the truth Aaron isn’t saying.

Aaron’s mouth flattens into a tense line. He drops his sandwich onto his plate and turns away to find a glass and some water. Andrew almost thinks he won’t answer until Aaron turns back, his finger tapping the rim of his glass.

“They don’t...believe in him,” Aaron explains. His nose wrinkles at the word  _ believe _ , but he continues anyway. “It’s like...I don’t know. Like they think he’s a fucking cell phone. Like they don’t think he’s…”

“Real,” Neil says from the doorway. His bright blue gaze is fixed on Andrew, reminding.

_ Want to be a real boy? _

Andrew shifts against the counter. It bites into his back as he turns to face Neil. “You’re not. Not really.”

Not to the world. Most of it, anyway.

Neil examines a sandwich. It’s when his lips curve into a sharp smirk that Andrew realizes his mistake.

He made three.

Neil slowly opens his mouth and takes a bite. His thumb presses against the corner of his mouth and he swipes away a smear of mayonnaise. When Neil swallows, his tongue flicks out to press against his bottom lip. “Not bad for a human.”

Andrew…

...is stuck. He thinks about the curve of Neil’s wrist and the flecks on his skin. He thinks about who the fuck would design a robot with freckles. He thinks about whether Neil likes eating and whether he can taste. If he can taste better.

He thinks about how it’s true that Neil isn’t real. He’s a complex net of tek, designed by humans to serve a purpose—and there’s the magic holding him together, too. The crackle of bright blue that hangs like static in the air around Neil.

Neil may be half machine but it’s the magic part that Andrew is interested in. Magic, because no one knows what it is or what it does to humans, much less machines.

For all Andrew knows, there is something  _ else  _ looking through Neil’s eyes and at him.

“Andrew,” Aaron says suddenly. He is present again, his gaze stony. “Why are you here?”

Andrew takes a bite of his sandwich and chews slowly. “Kevin,” he finally says simply.

“What? Did he finally get sick of you?”

“He has always been sick of me.”

Aaron snorts. “That’s not an answer. What, did he...send you to check on me? He can’t be that stupid.”

“He is. But no,” Andrew says. “He says something is happening. He wants to make a move.”

Aaron stills, one hand wavering above his glass of water. Andrew can practically see the gears turning, connections sparking like the tek Aaron spends his nights poring over.

It’s Neil’s reaction that interests Andrew. Even given the vagueness of Andrew’s statement, Neil slowly paces toward the sink and begins filling the sink to wash dishes. It would seem casual except for the coiled potential in Neil’s body. The way he makes every move just a little quieter.

He’s listening. Whether he knows what is happening or not is unclear.

So far.

“Kevin? Making a move?” Aaron’s eyes narrow. “That’s the worst lie you’ve told me yet.”

“You know, the world continued to revolve when you left the Foxes,” Andrew says. Aaron recoils a little, the jab hitting a soft spot just like Andrew expected it to. “He’s not how you remember him.”

“Oh? Any thanks to you?”

It toes the line enough for Andrew to hold up the knife resting by his wrist. He taps it against Aaron’s chest, warning. “Don’t.”

Not that Andrew would stab Aaron. Fatally.

Neil appears suddenly, slim and blue-red as he stands between Andrew and Aaron. He extends his hand, nothing in his expression betraying a sense of threat or panic. He is asking for the knife.

Andrew arches an eyebrow. He slowly extends the knife, blade first. Neil takes it without protest.

“He wants to retrieve his little bird,” Andrew finally says. “These accidents...attacks. They are something changing. Something happening.”

“Kevin’s hand was sawed off and he still won’t use it, even with the new prosthetic,” Aaron snaps. “You expect me to believe he is prepared to become a revolutionary? Risk standing against NEST when he’s been nothing but paranoid about a killswitch?”

“Oh, I never said he was prepared.” Andrew runs a finger along the black fabric pressed snugly against his arms. He can imagine the sharpness of the blade hidden there.

Aaron drops half of his sandwich on to the plate beside him. “What are you looking for?” He runs a hand over his face, the exhaustion that had been apparent at the accident resurfacing.

“Kevin’s answer,” Andrew says mockingly. He does not believe it. It is a lie and a dream. Still, he has no other way. They made a deal. “Something that will be the last step to facing NEST.”

“An answer.” Aaron laughs shortly. “Which is what?”

“A back door,” Andrew says softly.  _ Impossible.  _ “A way to cut through their net.”

Aaron is silent. Andrew can track his realization through the shift in Aaron’s stance, the parting of his lips, and the hitch in his breathing.

Aaron looks at Neil and the only thing Andrew sees in his eyes is desperation. Refusal.

“You want him,” he realizes. “No.”

“Doesn’t have to be it.” Andrew examines Aaron’s sandwich and peels the layers apart. “Software will work. You know that.”

_ “No.” _

This is enough. Andrew is tired and thinned, a rubber band stretched uncomfortably far. He shoves the picked-apart sandwich away and begins to leave the kitchen. “You are a Fox. You were, you are, you will always be. Don’t try to run when you are called. You made a promise.”

Andrew leaves Aaron in the kitchen, but not before casting one final look at Neil.

The robot stands facing Aaron, eyes closed as if he has just accepted some immense burden. When Neil opens his eyes, there is a distant resignation in their blue depths.

Neil takes a step toward Aaron and Andrew turns away. He does not need to see any more to know that Neil will do what he must for Aaron.

Even if it means tearing out pieces of himself.

♅

"Don’t.”

Neil sighs through his nose. He closes his eyes for a moment, just to feel his body. Aaron’s bed is too small for them, but Neil is curled on his side anyway, legs bent awkwardly to fit the space he is given.

“Don’t,” Aaron says again, quiet. His breath tickles Neil’s collarbone, a faintly warm breeze.

Neil opens his eyes. Aaron stares determinedly at Neil’s chest as if he can simply will Neil to do—or not do—what he wants.

“What promise?” Neil aks.

Aaron squeezes his eyes shut so tightly Neil knows he must be seeing spots. One of Aaron’s hands twists at Neil’s oversized shirt, clutching at the fabric as if it is keeping him afloat. “It’s not—it’s nothing.”

“It’s something.” Neil curls his hands around Aaron’s and waits for it to still. “Tell me.”

Aaron opens his eyes. He looks at nothing—or maybe something, a memory or a nightmare, buried far enough in the past that he has to dig it out with his bare hands. Neil lets him order his words and waits, patient.

“We promised,” Aaron says quietly. “All of us. We were taken in and we found each other. We made a promise—we were one. We would fight to stand. No one would fall alone.”

“And?”

“And it was stupid.” Aaron shut his eyes again. His forehead tilted onto Neil’s collarbone, skin warm against Neil’s. “We were stupid.”

Neil inched his fingers through Aaron’s hair and gently tugged. “But you promised.”

_ Why? _

The Aaron that Neil knows does not promise lightly. He hardly ever does. He keeps himself to himself, and he does not rely on others. Does not let others rely on him.

It is enough to feel the burden of saving lives. Aaron does not need the burden of saving friends.

“I thought…” Aaron stops, pressing closer to Neil. “I don’t know what I thought.”

_ You thought they could be yours, and you could be theirs. _

“It doesn’t matter,” Neil whispers. It is what Aaron needs to hear. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

Aaron closes his eyes. Neil holds him, his body carefully poised and still, and listens to Aaron breathe until he falls asleep.

♅

Andrew wakes to see Neil in the shop, one leg propped high on a table and his right hand between his legs.

“What are you doing.”

Neil doesn’t bother to look up. He leans forward a little, a furrow between his eyebrows. “Maintenance.”

“Is that what you call it?”

Finally, Neil stops. He looks up and withdraws his hand—there is some sort of wrench in it, dangling when he drapes his arm over his knee. “Yes.”

Andrew rolls off the couch and takes a few steps into the shop. When he walks around the opposite side of the table, he can see what Neil is working on.

There is a small panel on the inside of Neil’s thigh. The tek is not seamless; fine, raised scars flickering with residual magic enclose the square that is hardly bigger than Neil’s palm. It is a small inconsistency, but noticeable.

“Looks like Aaron does rough work. I’m shocked you don’t look like a punching bag.”

Neil’s gaze sharpens. “Aaron’s gentle with me. He’s always careful when—”

It’s too early in the morning for this. “Shut up.”

“Why? It's true. He never forces—”

“Shut up,” Andrew repeats. There is a screwdriver in his hand and he does not remember picking it up. He points it at Neil’s chest and watches the robot’s too-blue eyes flicker. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

“You were the one that brought up his tek skills.”

“Oh, is that what we’re talking about.”

Neil pauses. He must notice something in Andrew’s mocking tone—he  _ must _ —because Neil frowns hesitantly and says, “Yes.”

The robot is a fool. An absolute, utter fool.

“You two are perfect for each other.” Andrew tosses the screwdriver on the table and stalks away.

Neil follows him. Andrew can hear the light whirr of a fan kicking in as Neil walks, probably cooling whatever tek system Neil was working on. “Oh? Why? Because he works with tek?”

“Because you are idiots.” Andrew wrenches the fridge open too hard. A little pulse up his arm warns him, the implant behind his ear humming with the staticky residue of tek and magic. “It’s no wonder he built you stupid. He doesn’t have the brain to make you the smart one.”

“You’re the one spreading mustard on pizza.”

Andrew almost doesn’t look down. His bitter refusal to listen to anything the imitation of a man says is only overridden by the thought that he might have ruined his breakfast.

The pizza slice has a yellow squiggle across its surface like a garden snake.

Andrew stares back at Neil. “And?”

It tastes disgusting when he takes a bite but he eats it anyway.

Neil’s lips curve into a pleased little smirk. Andrew wants to smack it off. “You have such a terrible attitude. It’s no wonder he never talks about you.”

“You think I care?”

“No. Not the way people expect you to,” Neil amends. Andrew’s fingers curl around the crust of his pizza. “But you care more than people notice.”

Andrew doesn’t like how close Neil is coming to the truth. He shifts his stance, weight balanced between both feet. He is prepared to tackle Neil and crack his head against the tile if necessary. He’s sure it might not break a robot, but it could buy him time. If Neil is being piloted by someone or something else, every second matters.

“And how exactly do you know that? Spying on me like you said you would never?”

“Not spying,” Neil says. He isn’t paying attention to Andrew. Not entirely. Neil reaches into the fridge and pulls out a doughnut, the only sweet thing Andrew saw, and Andrew’s fingers reach for the knife block. “Just looking. You’d be surprised what you can see with your eyes.”

“And what did you see with your special little eyes?” Andrew drops his pizza crust onto the counter.

Neil shrugs. “Nothing earth-shattering. Suspicion of homicide, institutionali—”

Andrew slams a knife into the counter. It goes through like butter. His arm feels heated; a ripple of augmentation flexes beneath his skin. His implant buzzes distantly, the sound like an old-fashioned television when it is turned on.

“Give me a reason not to bury this in your drive and tear you apart.”

Neil is humming. It’s almost imperceptible. His eyes are bluer, the color crackling with magic. Andrew can see the lines on Neil’s body humming with tekno-magic, bright color seeping from the fissures where he has been assembled.

Neil looks like he is prepared to run. Andrew is not going to let him.

“Andrew,” Aaron says sharply. He is in the doorway suddenly, bags abandoned at his feet. He starts to come closer, but Andrew points a warning finger at him.

Aaron glances at Neil. His hands flex impatiently and there is something in his eyes—

—some pain, some apology, that makes Andrew want to shake him. Slap him. Ask him what the fuck he’s doing letting something like Neil worm its way into him like this.

“It won’t give you any answers,” Neil says.

“Wrong answer.”

Neil turns to the side and takes a knife from the block. Andrew tenses and prepares but suddenly, Neil is driving the knife into his shoulder. Aaron’s wordless cry is distant.

There is a thin red trail of blood emerging from the thin gash in Neil’s shirt.

Blood.

“I will never do anything to hurt Aaron,” Neil says carefully. He drives the knife deeper and Andrew watches with distant curiosity as the hole in Neil’s shirt widens.

Funny. The blue lines across Neil’s chest are met by branches reaching toward either side of his body. It looks like he is a corpse.

Andrew wonders if it is by design, or if whoever made him has a sick sense of humor.

Aaron didn’t make Neil. That is all Andrew knows, now.

“Stop,” Aaron finally says. He rushes forward as if he has forgotten Andrew’s silent warning. Or maybe he doesn’t care.

Aaron presses a dishcloth against the cut and pulls the knife out. When he tosses it in the sink it makes a metallic clatter. He directs Neil toward the shop, but not before giving Andrew a cold stare.

“You have until tomorrow night to tell me what the fuck you want. After that, get out.”

♅

“You don’t mean it,” Neil murmurs.

Aaron’s fist clenches around the diagnostic wand he is passing over Neil’s freshly stitched cut. He has to force his mouth open to say, “I do.”

He left them alone for ten minutes, and he came back to Andrew threatening to disassemble Neil.

Aaron has seen Neil in pieces. He won’t let that happen again.

“Hey.”

Aaron doesn’t answer. He finishes the diagnostic and starts patching on skin-mesh, moving slower than usual. He can’t think about what it would be like for Neil to have another scar. Another one he gave himself.

For Aaron.

“Hey.” Neil’s prompt goes unanswered. Aaron continues. “Hey. Hey.”

“Are you seriously—”

Neil smiles. He laughs once, short, mouth closed and noise contained. Aaron shakes his head, but he feels something uncurl between his shoulders. Tension.

“Don’t worry about me.” Neil says softly.

“He wants to rip you to pieces,” Aaron replies shortly. He slaps skin-mesh down a little too hard and feels immediately guilty.

Neil bumps his nose against Aaron’s forehead, insistent. Aaron looks up wearily and finds Neil’s blue eyes clear and direct. “He won’t. And even if he did, he’s trying to protect you. I can relate,” Neil adds quietly.

“That’s about all you have in common,” Aaron says, tense. He turns away and shoves his tools back into his kit, metal clattering and plastic bottles rattling with pills.

This is stupid. All of it is stupid.  _ Andrew is back, and for what? Some promise a bunch of idiots made when we thought we were the most important things in the world? _

Aaron only knows half of Neil’s story, but he does know that Neil makes him lunch when he’s on duty. He knows Neil sometimes washes the bedsheets when Aaron forgets too long, and Aaron comes home to the faint smell of lavender and vanilla that helps him fall asleep faster.

Aaron knows that Neil has broken the tek in his arm trying to pull Aaron up from a cliff when Aaron nearly fell from a bus crash site on a cliff. Neil has spent his short batteries on running to Aaron when the power in the city went out, even though Neil only had half a dozen of them left.

Neil has thrown himself into every situation they have come across like he is invincible. He’s done that, even though Aaron found him cut into pieces and mangled almost beyond recognition.

Aaron doesn’t need to know who butchered Neil to know that Neil would die before he hurt or betrayed Aaron. All he needs to know is the way Neil reaches out now, the blue line at his wrist glowing softly, and presses a hand to Aaron’s cheek.

“Remember?”

“Remember the promise?” Aaron laughs. It’s devoid of humor, frail, lost. It is there, though. “Promises. Stupid.”

Neil’s thumb traces over Aaron’s cheek. He asks again. “Remember?”

Aaron closes his eyes. He can smell the rain if he tries. “Let me help you.”

Neil presses his forehead to Aaron’s. “Let me stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now we come to the end of the beginning  
> i suppose you could say we have introduced the story and now we are going to Suffer  
> happy trails?


	4. a hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil is taken to meet some of the other Foxes. He is the only one that can do this, Kevin says.  
> Neil already knows, just like he knows he will not make it out alive.

_ I heard he took in an interesting robot. One that can dive. _

Dive. Andrew hadn’t heard that word, or the word that Aaron had a companion. Roommate.

Robot.

Neil stands in the shop wearing a too-large sweater, apparently too focused on filling someone’s order to pay attention to anything or anyone else. Andrew knows better. He knows that Neil has Andrew in his periphery and he is watching. Waiting.

All the caution tempts Andrew to pull a knife on Neil again, but he has the feeling Aaron will complain about it and the customers won’t enjoy blood on their tek.

No matter. Andrew is content to sit back and watch Neil at work. He is an odd creature, not only because of his design, but because of his habits. Andrew has never met a robot that likes to eat human food just for show.

Well. Mostly for show. Neil claims it gives him sustenance but Andrew doubts it’s much.

Anyway, Neil just isn’t built the way he should be. The way most robots are. There’s a strict line between functionality and aesthetic when it comes to robots, especially where the Moriyamas are concerned. Robots don’t need coppery-red hair that looks gold in the sunlight or blue eyes with dark, feathery lashes.

“You’re going to fall,” Neil says.

Andrew leans further in his chair. He’s almost balanced on one leg. Neil doesn’t even look.

Aaron glances at Andrew for the fiftieth time that afternoon. “If you aren’t going to help, why don’t you go buy some food? You know, since you decided to come crash my place?”

“Am I crashing something?” Andrew asks, eyes wide. “Am I a bother? Neil, am I a bother?”

“Absolutely,” Neil says immediately. “Go buy some food, bother.”

Andrew pauses with a fake, open-mouthed smile on his lips. It’s amusing how readily Neil offers his head up for the guillotine. Aaron must think the same; he quickly steps between Andrew and Neil, one hand on Neil’s shoulder. Andrew narrows his eyes at the offending appendage.

“Will you grab more wire from the house?” Aaron asks quietly.

Neil nods. His hand raises to press over Aaron’s for just a moment—

—a fleeting, fuzzy moment—

—and then Neil leaves, taking his blue-glowing scars and ridiculous shorts with him.

Andrew tilts his head and his chair further. “Sending him into another room won’t save him from me.”

“I know that,” Aaron says darkly. He twists a screwdriver into a piece of hardware a little too savagely and mutters a curse under his breath. “I don’t know why the fuck you need to harass him. You need him, fine. Being an ass won’t help.”

“I don’t need him,” Andrew says evenly, dropping each word like dead weight. “I don’t need.”

“Fine. Kevin needs him. Whatever,” Aaron snaps. “I don’t give a shit. It’s Neil’s decision. If he says no—”

“He won’t say no.”

It is neither confidence nor hubris that makes Andrew say it. He just knows, because he knows Neil brushed Aaron’s hand before he left. Because he knows Neil left the house for the accident before he was called. Because Andrew knows, without a doubt, that Neil was not lying when he said  _ I will never hurt him. _

Because the Moriyama threat is going to reach Aaron, and Neil will not let that happen.

“You don’t know that,” Aaron says, but it is weak. He slides the tek in his hand onto the table and watches it roll unevenly onto its side.

Andrew doesn’t bother to argue. Aaron knows just as well as Andrew that Neil will throw himself into the fire if it means Aaron will be safe.

Neil returns a moment later, a bundle of wire in his left hand and an apple in his right. He places the wire on the table and then extends the apple, tapping it against Aaron’s mouth. “Eat.”

Aaron is silent. He wants to say something; it is so obvious that Andrew very much wants to smack the back of Aaron’s head. But Neil just waits patiently until Aaron bites into the apple, eyes lowering in silent thanks and apology.

For some reason, Andrew feels intrusive, and he dislikes that. He does not like it at all.

Andrew abruptly rises from his chair and turns toward the door. “I am leaving. Don’t cause any accidents until I’m back.”

♅

“You still don’t have to say yes.”

“You still haven’t told me your order.” Neil stares back at Aaron and lifts his feet onto the worktable. He slouches further into the padded rolling chair he sits in, knees almost as high as his head while he pushes and pulls himself away from the table.

Aaron’s mouth twists into a dissatisfied frown. “Lo mein and lemon chicken. This is not a joke.”

“I take Chinese food very seriously,” Neil says.

“Neil.” Aaron sighs when the bell behind him rings; he walks away to answer the shop window, the last repair of the day ready to be returned to its rightful owner.

Neil contemplates Aaron at the window, his profile illuminated by the neon of the city beyond. Aaron has always been ghostly, not just because of his paleness but also because of the way he seems to disappear into the world. If he stands still and quiet, Aaron almost looks like he is becoming part of the scenery.

Not that Aaron is forgettable. He isn’t becoming nothing when he blends in—not like Neil—and he isn’t disappearing without trying. Aaron lets the world absorb him because sometimes he has to watch it, either to understand or perhaps to remind himself that not everything is horrific.

Aaron lives his life at the scene of the crime, or the accident. Neil feels lucky just to be able to see Aaron when he is away.

Neil feels lucky to be able to bring Aaron back, when he’s gone too far.

“I mean it,” Aaron says. He is back at Neil’s side again, somehow teleporting in the span of the few seconds Neil took to think. “Don’t assume you can’t say no. He won’t do anything to me if you do. Don’t do it for me.”

_ But I’ll only do it for you,  _ Neil thinks, because it is true. Because it is reality, even if Aaron doesn’t realize it. There is a darkness coming, and it will reach Aaron unless Neil stops it. Unless he builds a wall strong enough to withstand the assault.

Neil shrugs. “I’m not. I’m going to extort Andrew for free Chinese food for the duration of the agreement.”

_Lie._ _Lie again and I will take your legs, next._

Neil closes his eyes. He feels Aaron’s hand push through his hair a moment later, firm and comforting. “I can’t remember for you,” Aaron says quietly. “But I have a feeling this is not the first time someone has demanded too much from you.”

Neil wants to cry. He wishes he could; he wishes he could sob into the bedspread and curl into a ball, ignoring the world except for Aaron’s hand on his head. The reassurance of a body beside him.

He cannot take refuge when the enemy does not care about collateral damage.

“What do you think Andrew wants?” Neil asks.

Aaron’s fingers tighten. He tugs on Neil’s hair like he can make him stop thinking about Andrew, which is funny, because Neil gets the feeling Andrew is doing more thinking about Neil than the other way around.

“Whatever Kevin wants, knowing him. He doesn’t really want anything, himself.”

_ Well, that’s not true.  _ “I was talking about the Chinese food,” Neil says.

Aaron snorts. He rests his chin on Neil’s head for a second and then kisses it, a brief gesture before Aaron walks back to the shop table to close up for the day. “Just get him something spicy, like his fucking attitude.”

♅

Neil looks like he is ready to crawl out of his skin.

It’s imperceptible to anyone else but Aaron has known Neil for years. He knows the telltale emptiness in Neil’s eyes and the disguised tension in his body.

He knows Neil will have planned five escapes and twenty-two hacks in the time it takes them to find a seat in the rail car. The train may move at half the speed of light but Neil moves at the speed of someone far too familiar with running for his life.

Aaron wants to tell Neil again  _ you don’t have to,  _ but he knows the answer he’ll receive. Neil is set on this path.

Even if he’s terrified.

At the end of the line is Kevin and the rest of the Foxes. The others—aside from Seth, who left with Aaron years before. They are the only two that didn’t stay close to the rest. The only two Foxes that fled the den and looked for something else.

When the train comes to a stop it seems as if the world is slowing with it. Aaron doesn’t realize his hand has curled around his knee until Neil’s hand pries it off, fingers intertwining with Aaron’s in an effort to distract him.

“Are you sure about this?”

Neil smiles, a ghostly shape with something like sadness at its edges. “Yes. I am.”

Somehow, the answer isn’t comforting at all.

Andrew is first out, black duffel bag thrown over his shoulder. He tosses it at Kevin when he steps out.

Kevin.

He looks the same—

—but like Andrew said, he is not the same, and Aaron knows it.

Kevin’s hand is still gloved but Aaron can see a reddish glow radiating from beneath the edges of the fabric. Aaron remembers seeing it for the first time; he remembers the ragged lines and bumpy scars, evidence of careless and thorough brutality.

Kevin’s hand was a work of art from the NEST, once. Now it is a reminder.

The Moriyamas have strict rules regarding their people and their robots. NEST tech is always purposeful; home androids and industrial models have only basic skins, non-threatening statures and simplistic designs. The high-class concierge androids and bartender types are more detailed; more perfect.

Kevin is not one of NEST’s run of the mill robots. He is meant to be human. He is meant to mimic everything about a human and every feature he has does this, from the scattered moles on his brown skin to the slightly mismatched brown of his eyes. Kevin is perfectly imperfect, just like the Moriyamas like it.

Except for when Kevin opens his mouth.

“This one.” Kevin points at Neil. “Why did I imagine more height?”

Neil doesn’t bat an eye at the tactless comment. “I don’t know. You do live with someone shorter than me. Sounds like a personal problem.”

Kevin’s disgruntled frown deepens. “Is this—”

“This is Neil,” Aaron interrupts sharply. He is already tightly wound from the trip and he can tell Neil is at the end of his rope. “And I don’t give a fuck what it is you want. If he wants to leave, we leave.”

Kevin narrows his eyes at Aaron. “You do not understand. I do not—”

“Oh, I do. I understand just fine,” Aaron snaps. “You send Andrew to do your dirty work, out of nowhere, and just expect me to pretend everything is fine when—”

Andrew’s finger is suddenly in front of Aaron’s mouth. There is a cold sheen to his eyes, like light reflecting off glass marbles. It makes Aaron want to recoil. He barely manages to keep his feet planted.

“Shh,” Andrew says softly. Somehow, it manages to seem like a warning.

There is an awkward cough from nearby and Aaron turns to find Nicky lingering by a bench. “So this is Neil! You are adorable.”

Aaron whips around to stare at Andrew in disbelief. “What the fuck. Why the fuck—”

“I heard about something big happening, so of course I had to fly back,” Nicky says. His tone is upbeat but Aaron can hear right through it. He’s nervous.

_ But he flew all the way from Germany just for this. For fucking Kevin. _

_ For NEST. _

_ He was out. _

“You called him?” Aaron asks Andrew quietly.

There is a glint in Andrew’s eyes. He stares at Aaron and his hand moves out of sight. “You are seriously misguided, Aaron. I suggest you stop talking before you say something you will regret.”

_ Me? I’m the problem? _

Neil’s hand tightens and Aaron realizes he never let go.

“Are we going to keep standing here or are we going somewhere? I’m hungry,” Neil says.

♅

Abby does not accept refusals, apparently.

It doesn’t matter. Dinner is an opportunity for Neil to size up these strangers—these Foxes—and determine who it is he’s throwing his life away for.

Other than Aaron.  _ And it’s not throwing it away if it’s him. _

Neil glances up at Matt while the table is being set. Matt is a pretty big guy; he has broad shoulders and a seemingly friendly personality. He’s fatherly in a strange way, like if someone hurt themselves he’d frown and be the first to offer help.

Matt also has obvious track mark scars on his arms.

“These?”

Neil blinks. He is suddenly looking back at Matt, who has paused in setting down forks and knives to offer up his forearms. Neil blinks, unsure of what to say.

Matt shrugs. “When I was young, my father told me I should take nano supplements. He wanted to work me up to prosthetic transplants, for my arms. I couldn’t stop.”

_ A familiar story. _

Nanos were an immense high, especially to unaugmented humans.  _ And once you start wanting more, you take what you get.  _ Neil has seen the shit that street dealers peddle. The so-called nanos in the drugs would more likely cut your blood vessels instead of build up proteins or reinforce muscle and bone.

“I didn’t ask,” Neil says. He feels indebted, somehow.

Matt just smiles. “I know. But it doesn’t bother me. I moved on.”

Neil doesn’t ask how. He already knows the answer.

Andrew sits at the far end of the table, one leg propped over the other as a cigarette dangles from his hand. He is not looking at the scene before him; he is elsewhere. Neil is surprised Andrew even bothered to sit at the table. Maybe it’s the food he stayed for.

“You can ask questions if you want, Neil,” Dan says. Her assertion is sudden and Neil turns to look at her, once again hesitating with his hands over the silverware. “You deserve that much.”

“Why?”  _ I haven’t done anything. _

Dan’s dark eyes assess Neil. He is not worried about what she sees—no one can see what he has hidden, not even Aaron—but there is a care to Dan’s gaze that unsettles Neil. She worries about people.

He is not worth worrying over.

“You didn’t ask for this,” Dan finally says. “NEST—the Moriyamas are dangerous. They are not what they seem to the world. We are asking you to do something that will change your life. But we’re hoping it will change everyone’s.”

Neil has the urge to curl his hand around the steak knife under his palm.  _ Moriyamas.  _ They don’t even know. The Foxes don’t know.

_ How could they? How could they know that I know the Moriyamas inside and out? That I know just what the monster looks like? _

There is a copper tang in Neil’s mouth. The ghost of blood and magik, crackling with static. If he closed his eyes, he could see the Tower before him. He could see the production floor with its white walls and tiles.

He could see Kengo with his hand on a small not-child’s shoulder, and the not-child’s black eyes fixed on Neil with an empty stare.

“Rousing speech,” Andrew says, unfolding his legs and rising from his seat. “I’m sure Neil is oh so ready to die for the cause.”

“He has to be,” Kevin says raggedly. His gloved hand shakes against his thigh and Neil can see the blue tekno-magic bleeding color around its edges.

_ I wonder if I could put it back together. Their stolen property. _

“He is going to help us. Aren’t you, Neil?” Andrew’s question was lilting as if he was singing the lyrics to a morbid song. “You can’t afford to lose your precious—”

**_You can’t afford to lose your precious game. Can you, Nathaniel?_ **

Neil doesn’t register his body moving. He only recognizes the low, burning hum of magic and tek as his limbs move faster than humanly possible, and then he is standing back against the wall and Andrew has a knife to his throat.

“Where are you running, Neil?”

Neil’s mouth tastes like battery acid. He can see Aaron moving to help out of the corner of his eye and he silently lifts a hand in his direction, warning. “I am not running. I got up to get away from you. You just don’t stop talking.”

There is a silent  _ oooh  _ from the direction of the kitchen. It sounds like it might be Nicky and it also sounds both horrified and gleeful.

Andrew tilts his knife. It is not touching Neil but it seems so close.  _ It came from those bands on his arms, _ Neil realizes. He had suspected they stored something and now he knows for a fact.

Just like Neil knows that Andrew doesn’t trust him. Andrew thinks he knows something. Thinks Neil is hiding something dangerous.

Funny. As if Kevin isn’t a danger at all. Kevin, the other one, the second model that the Moriyamas made before Neil even entered the picture.

“If you want to continue to threaten me, go ahead,” Neil says. “But I’m sick of all this talk. Say what you need to say to me and let’s do this. We don’t have time for your posturing.”

Neil is faintly certain that Andrew is going to stab him at the very least. Instead, he feels Aaron pull him out of the way, his body directly between Neil and Andrew. Neil almost wants to collapse in his arms.  _ How does it feel like we’ve been apart for days when it’s only been hours? _ Neil can still feel Andrew’s eyes on his back but he ignores them; he searches Aaron’s face instead.

Aaron looks guilty. He hasn’t stopped looking guilty since Andrew showed up. “We shouldn’t have come,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—”

“No.” Neil slides his hand around Aaron’s wrist where it dangles between them. He wants to lean closer, press their foreheads together, and ignore everything else. Everyone else. They don’t matter.  “I do this and you don’t have to worry about them coming for you.”

“You don’t know that. I’ve never been on their radar,” Aaron hisses. “I am safe.”

_ You’re not. And it’s my fault. _

Neil thinks he can feel the tek that grips his heart, magic heating the connection between synthetic tubes and the muscle of what is left of the organ.

It hurts.

“No one is safe,” Neil says quietly. “And I won’t risk you.”

♅

_ Why does a robot care so much? _

Andrew watches Neil from the far end of the table. It’s empty now, dinner long gone and the Foxes awkwardly assembled. No one looks happy.

They are discussing the end of the world, after all.

“The Moriyamas are planning something,” Kevin finally says. He looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin and away from the name  _ Moriyama. _

He is still weak. He has grown, but not enough. Not yet.

Neil’s hands are beneath the table. Andrew is not sure if he is holding a weapon or Aaron’s hand. He does not like either idea, but he does not like the latter more.

Only because Aaron would get in the way, Andrew tells himself.

“That’s obvious,” Neil says. Kevin’s mouth flattens into a line.

“Really.”

“None of the accidents were accidents,” Aaron interrupts.  _ Always protecting the robot.  _ “We’ve seen enough of them to know. There are intentional corruptions in the tek, but it’s always too damaged to salvage. They’re testing something.”

“Testing a virus maybe,” Neil adds. “Or some other time-sensitive package. Their style isn’t chaos. Whatever it is has to take absolute control, quietly and cleanly.”

Dan glances at Andrew. “I thought you said he didn’t know anything about NEST or the Moriyamas.”

“He can dive,” Kevin says quietly. “Can’t you?”

Andrew can see the twitch in Neil’s face. A recoiling.  _ He can. But something about it is dangerous. _ “No lying, Neil. I’ve seen you,” Andrew says, pointing a steak knife at Neil before wagging it in the air. “You look more vacant than usual when you dive.”

It’s a lie. Neil is never vacant and Andrew knows he is least vacant when he is diving. When he is most vulnerable.

“I can dive,” Neil says slowly. “But that means nothing if I am not good enough.”

“You can be good enough,” Kevin says sharply. “I did not just bring you here because you can do it. I brought you because you will do it. All you need is direction.”

“Direction,” Neil replies. He laughs humorlessly and Andrew sees Neil’s visible hand curl around the arm of his chair. “Then why don’t you do it yourself? Or are you afraid? Do you know it is hopeless?”

Andrew’s hand twitches.  _ A little too close to the truth.  _ He drags the serrated knife in his hand across the tabletop, ignoring Dan’s exasperated gaze. “Careful, Neil. You came here.”

_ Willingly. Or as willingly as you ever could. _

Andrew still does not see why Neil came. Aaron was right when he said the Moriyamas weren’t watching him. Aaron was—is—free from scrutiny. Andrew hadn’t planned to see him ever again or bring him into this.

But Neil was with Aaron and he knew better than to let himself be kidnapped from the streets. He knew better than to leave Aaron alone, without whatever protection Neil thought he offered.

_ All he offers is a willingness to jump between Aaron and a bullet. Some protection. _

_ But why does it still leave a bitter taste in my mouth? _

“I know I came here. It will be my job,” Neil says. His eyelids lower halfway, as if he is gazing into the distant future. “Do not tell me how to die.”

“Wait a minute. You won’t die,” Dan says, holding up her hand. “Not unless every single thing goes wrong. Even then, I don’t think the Moriyamas would destroy you. And that would mean we’d have time to get you back.”

Neil stares at Dan and then turns his gaze toward Kevin, incredulous. “They don’t know.”

Andrew’s fingers go numb. He rises from his chair stands behind Kevin’s chair, one hand on Kevin’s chin. He tilts it up until Kevin is looking back at him, brown eyes uneasy an elusive.

“Know what, Kevin?” Andrew asks. He barely covers the irritation in his voice; it is slathered with an unbalanced amusement. A hysteric laugh that Andrew cannot contain, because of course Kevin would neglect to tell the Foxes something.

Of course Kevin would think they didn’t need to know until it was too late.

Kevin swallows. “We have limited energy,” he says. “Specific energy. Whatever it will take to do this, it may be more than we have. It may even cause a short or an overload.”

_They could die._ _Really die._

“Fry. Curse-burn,” Aaron says, his voice rising. “You  _ knew  _ it would kill him and you—”

“Wait,” Nicky interrupts, uncertain. “What are we talking about here? If it’s burnout we can replace their pump systems—”

“No,” Matt says, realization dawning. He looks at Kevin, distant fury visible in his eyes. “Tekno-magic can only withstand so much overload. The more delicate the process, the less likely you can fix it. At best, it would totally wipe all memory and information. At worst…”

“Death,” Neil says. The word falls from his lips with clinical detachment, as if he is speaking of a plant he failed to water. Like there is nothing startling about him losing all of his memories or potentially dying.

Dying the way a human would, for good. Forever.

“We can’t ask—” Dan starts, but Kevin cuts a hand through the air and interrupts her.

“We have to. If we don’t do this, millions are at risk. The Moriyamas won’t stop. They have been systematically destroying every other competitor in the industry. They will take over.”

“There has to be another way,” Matt argues. “Can’t we physically hack them? Anything?”

Andrew leans back on his heels. He almost laughs.  _ So eager to jump in until they think they’re going to kill a robot. _

_ Just a robot. _

“We will have to be close to the Tower when we do attempt to break in,” Andrew says lazily. “But infiltrating it is stupid. Useless. The only way to do this is from the outside. And that means we will be seen. All of us.”

_ No hiding. _

Andrew half expects Neil to withdraw. Claim sleep or something else.  _ Maintenance.  _ The unbidden image presents itself and Andrew shakes his head to dislodge it.

_ I do not care. He is a robot. He is supposed to imitate people. He is supposed to make you care. _

_ He is designed to do it. He does not really matter. _

“I’ll need multiple power backups,” Neil says quietly. Dan looks at him, incredulous, but he continues before she can interrupt. “We will have to make a mobile dark room. Kevin will need to show me everything he knows. Everything.”

Kevin nods sharply. “We will dive every day until we infiltrate them. You will know the system backward and forward before we go near them.”

The room is silent. Andrew waits for the inevitable arguments; Dan and Matt will never accept death and even Nicky will probably balk at the thought of Neil dying.  _ All for a robot when there is so much more at stake. _

“We need sleep,” Aaron says suddenly. “Neil needs sleep. Especially if you think you’re going to make him dive every day.”

Dan smiles tiredly and rises from her chair. “You’re right. We should have waited for this. Your room is still ready upstairs, Aaron. Neil—”

“Is staying with me,” Aaron says. His voice is raw, as if he has been yelling. Neil stands with him when he rises—

—and Andrew sees that he was right. Their hands are still clasped tight, Neil’s blue-lined one against Aaron’s bandage-wrapped one.

It makes the bitter taste in Andrew’s mouth return.

_ All for a robot. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 weeks post surgery i am  
> \- broke  
> \- sad  
> \- tired
> 
> but i got this chapter done and it was a little therapeutic, so  
> please enjoy  
> more soon


	5. hacking it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin wants Neil to be ready. Neil just wants a sandwich.

**** Neil’s hand hovers over a door. It is red-hot yet black, minuscule needles covering every inch. There is no doorknob, jus a toothed hole that is the perfect size for a hand to fit through. An arm.

Neil reaches out. He pushes his hand through, slowly. He doesn’t make a noise when he feels something ripping at his fingers. He exhales raggedly. Something shreds at his skin and bites at his bone. It is not surgical precision; it is the frenzied tearing of a carnivore.

At his wrist, it sounds like glass shattering and bone cracking. Blood is already seeping toward Neil’s feet, dripping down from the chasm that has taken his hand. The copper scent almost makes Neil tear himself away. Almost.

Finally, it ends—but it’s not enough. 

Neil jerks forward and slams into the door. He gasps, startled, the sensation of a million needles stabbing into his skin shocking him. A scream is trapped in his throat. He can feel his elbow cracking, misplaced, and then he slams onto his back. His arm is still being pulled into the doorknob. Neil grits his teeth—

—and then, for the third time since five in the morning, Neil comes back to his body gasping. He is pulled from the dive too quickly and he falls back onto what feels like a pillow. His body is jerking in bursts of tekno-magic, systems confused by the jarring disconnect.

“Come on,” Kevin says, impatient. “Come on, Neil. We don’t have time—”

“Get the fuck away from him,” Aaron hisses.

Neil blinks; his vision is still shaking like two slides, one frame over another, sideways motion almost rendering him nauseous. Aaron looks like a twin of himself and Neil wonders if Andrew is there for a second before he realizes it’s just his optics. One more snap and they click into place, jittery but clearer.

Aaron is at Neil’s side immediately. “Fuck. Hey, look at me. Count.”

Neil stares. Aaron is holding his hand up. “What? Serious—”

“Count,” Aaron demands.

Neil widens his eyes. “Friday.”

Aaron’s mouth twists in displeasure. “Not funny.”

Neil sighs and leans his head back. It is a pillow, he realizes. He guesses someone told Kevin to put it there. It’s a little too flat and not enough to stop superficial damage from collapsing or hitting his head, but Neil managed to keep himself more stable after being yanked this time.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Matt’s voice is fake-cheerful. Neil realizes the man is standing in the doorway, arms crossed.

Kevin looks peeved. It’s almost funny. “We need to practice. You—”

“This is what you call practice?” Matt waves a hand over Neil’s slumped form. “Looks to me like torture.”

Kevin’s jaw clenches.  _ Bad word, bad word,  _ Neil thinks fuzzily. He shakes his head and tries to pitch in. “Hey. I’m fine. I just—”

“Shut up,” Aaron mutters.

Matt doesn’t even acknowledge the interruption. “Look, we all want to help you, Kevin. But doing stupid shit like this just reminds us exactly why—”

“Why what?” Andrew strolls into the room, unmoved by the scene. Neil contemplates the window at his elbow. He estimates a jump would be survivable and then maybe he could get a little extra sleep. Or at least some food.

“Andrew,” Matt says patiently. “We want to help—”

“No, I already heard that part,” Andrew replies. He lazily spins a finger in a circle. “Go back to the comment about stupid shit. I mean, what you say is stupid shit.”

Neil is very tired of everything, so he nudges at a connection in his mind and watches as a panel on his calf hisses, the little bright blue line there turning a bloody red. “Oh, no,” he says. “I think I’m breaking.”

“Fucking Christ,” Aaron mutters. He pulls one of Neil’s arms over his shoulders and shoots Kevin and Andrew a venomous look. “Try not to beat anyone else while I’m gone.”

Neil can hear Kevin’s protest as they leave. “I didn’t beat him!”

Neil can walk perfectly well. He almost says as much while Aaron drags him through the rest of the Foxhole, at least until Neil realizes Aaron wants to be close. Aaron’s fingers are tangled with Neil’s, their grip tight.

The familiar tang of guilt rises in Neil’s throat.  _ I did this. I am doing this.  _ He wants to explain to Aaron; he wants to apologize in advance and say that this is all his fault. That Aaron was good enough to stop and scrape Neil off the pavement and Neil has repaid him by bringing the Moriyamas right to his doorstep.

Aaron pushes Neil into a chair. It feels softer than the one in Aaron’s shop. “Don’t move.”

Neil watches Aaron gather his tools. A wrench clatters unevenly on the tabletop beside Aaron and it’s followed by a few smaller devices. A pack of synth mesh slaps the counter.

After a few seconds of agitated noise, Neil finally speaks. “It’s not really hurt. I just didn’t feel like listening to them.”

Aaron stops. He turns to stare at Neil and there is something frustrated in his eyes. He almost looks like he’s about to cry. Neil’s heart races and he fights to keep himself in place. “I know,” Aaron says. “You think I don’t know you? I know you. I know when you’re hurt.”

_ Oh. _

“I’m scared,” Neil says. He doesn’t mean to but it comes out in a rush, steady despite how broken he feels.

It’s not just the bright blue lines of magic that betray where Neil was last disassembled and chopped into pieces like a lamb for slaughter. It’s the pieces inside. Neil can feel every grating pump of his real heart in the steel cage of his ribs.

Aaron’s eyes are red. He glares miserably down at the wrench in his hand. “I know.”

Neil almost doesn’t want to ask.  _ Is this it? Is this when he gives up on me?  _ “Will you—”

“Yeah.” Aaron turns around and in the next second, his arms are pulling Neil close. He holds them together, an island of pain and fear, and they somehow make it. Even if it’s just for now, just against the concept of what might happen, they make it.

“I’m not going to let you die,” Aaron says. “Not even if I have to storm that place and take it apart myself.”

_ You can’t.  _ Neil closes his eyes and tries not to think about what he will have to do to make sure Aaron never sets foot inside the Castle. “I know.”

 

♅

 

“You need to work harder,” Kevin says. “I know you can do this.”

Neil has the acute desire to punch Kevin in the mouth. It’s very interesting, given that Neil rarely wants much aside from sandwiches or Aaron’s worn-in hoodies.

“Don’t,” Dan says from the doorway. She is either a mind reader or has the same thought as Neil. Judging by the irritated twitch of her fingers against the water bottle in her hand, Neil suspects Dan is feeling punchy.

“I’ve already told you this is necessary,” Kevin says. It sounds a little bit like whining. He turns to stare at Dan, arms crossed over his chest. “If he can’t—”

“If he can’t stand up, he won’t even be able to hack a toaster,” Dan replies evenly. She tosses the water bottle in her hand to Neil. “We talked about this, Kevin. Breaks.”

Kevin throws his hands up. Neil ignores him, already halfway through his water. Aaron once asked Neil why he needed so much water. Neil said  _ I’m thirsty.  _ He didn’t understand why Aaron thought it was so funny until a week later.

_ That’s what I have to lose. _

Neil shakes his head and looks up to find Dan still in the doorway. “What?” He frowns. “Something else?”

Dan purses her lips. She obviously doesn’t want to say anything but finally, she opens her mouth and explains, “Renee got a lock on some booster tanks.”

Kevin nearly storms past Dan. It’s funny to watch him stop in his tracks when Dan puts her arm up and blocks the door. They’re pretty strong arms. “Everyone is waiting in the kitchen,” she explains. “We have a plan.”

“We don’t need a plan.” Kevin ducks under Dan’s arm and continues out the door.

Neil shrugs and stands. Dan is already rubbing her face tiredly, probably thinking about the conversation they’re about to have. Neil walks toward the kitchen and immediately looks for Aaron; things seem like they’re about to get interesting.

Andrew stares at Neil when he comes in. Andrew sits on the kitchen counter, one leg propped up and the other dangling off the edge. He has a sandwich in his hand.

“Sandwich?” Neil asks. He directs his question at Matt and not Andrew, who is still watching.

Matt grins and passes one to Neil. It’s about three inches thick and smells amazing. Kevin intercepts it and says, “You should—”

“I’m going to give you two seconds to give me that sandwich before I chop your arm off with my laser eyes,” Neil says.

Kevin falters. “You have—?”

“No,” Aaron says as he enters. He walks past Neil and grabs the sandwich back from Kevin. “But I could always upgrade him.”

It’s a lie. Still, Neil is pleased when Aaron takes a bite and passes the sandwich back to him. Matt is laughing somewhere else in the room.

“As fun as this is, we do have business to take care of,” Dan says. She slides into a chair next to Matt. The others gradually migrate toward the center of the room and the table laden with food. Most of it is probably not Kevin-approved; sandwiches, chips, cookies, some fruits and vegetables. Coffee. Neil already knows what Kevin would say.  _ Drink that and you’ll have to be flushed with sterile solution. _

Neil crosses his legs and sits in a chair backed up against the counters. He feels Aaron’s legs dangle beside his shoulders after a few seconds.

Andrew’s staring has turned into glaring.

“You said you found booster tanks,” Kevin says shortly. “That’s all there is to say. Neil and I—”

“You’re not rushing in alone. You don’t even know where they are,” Matt says.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Say something else stupid,” Neil says. “I’m sure one of these times we’ll actually laugh.”

Kevin shoots Neil a glare. He is about to speak again but Andrew beats him to it. “So, where.”

“Not far,” Renee says. It seems like maybe she’s heard enough. She has the aura of someone playing peacemaker. Neil doesn’t trust it.  _ You can’t soothe both sides unless you know them intimately.  _ If Renee knows Kevin and Andrew’s side intimately, she is neither peaceful nor immaculate. Not at all.

Allison shrugs. “They’re also in a warehouse. We’re not sure how long they’ve been there. Could be extra shipment or backup.”

“Or a trap,” Matt adds. “Easy way to lure scrappers. Set up some pricey treasure and watch them come like flies to honey.”

_ Maybe. Or maybe they have someone here already.  _ Someone that would need emergency refills without being too obvious.

The Moriyamas liked to do that. Have an augmented RAVEN in the field, watching for whatever fallout they were currently masterminding. It was a way to set the not-quite-humans loose and see if they remained loyal. If they could be trusted.

If they needed to be dismantled.

Kevin should have said as much, but by his silence, Neil assumed this was an old argument. One that the others probably preferred not to talk about.

As long as none of them had ever seen Kevin’s face, it didn’t matter. As long as he wasn’t in the system, no RAVEN or robot would know to look for him. Maybe—

— _ maybe this will work. _

They needed it to.

“Well, if anything, sending both of you is a stupid idea,” Nicky says. He slices a mango into a bowl as he talks, which is a clever way of avoiding Kevin’s glare when it hits him. “If we lose you both, we have no way to counter the Moriyamas.”

_ They keep saying Moriyamas. There’s only one.  _ Neil opens his mouth to say as much but Andrew talks over the silence.

“I take Neil,” Andrew says. “Simple.”

“Not simple,” Aaron immediately snaps. “You aren’t taking him anywhere.”

“What? I’m not going to switch him off and dump him,” Andrew says, affecting shock. “We  _ need  _ him, remember?”

“Fu—”

“Nothing happens without me,” Kevin says darkly. “I go, Andrew goes, Neil maybe. Making it out won’t be difficult if something happens.”

“Really? Because last time I checked, you couldn’t make it out of anywhere alone,” Dan says quietly.

The silence now is not so forgiving. Neil can feel the air crackling; he suspects it’s augmentations and magic sparking. Someone is very angry.

_ You’d think people so ready to die for one another would get along better. _

“Okay,” Neil says. He shoves the last bit of sandwich into his mouth and tries not to roll his eyes when everyone turns to look as if they forgot he was there. “Kevin, Andrew, me. Renee can track us just in case. If no one is on your trail yet, it won’t be a problem. They might after this, though. So think about what that means.”

“Means someone else goes on a run for the last few tanks,” Matt says simply. He shrugs and glances at Dan. “With two hackers, you should have your bases covered and be able to run dual attacks. You all are the fastest. If you can get in and get out, I say do it.”

“Exactly,” Kevin says. He seems a little less disgruntled about the conversation with a bowl of mango in his hands. “We do it tomorrow. We get it done.”

_ If the Master doesn’t show up and kill us. _

 

♅

 

The sound of Neil’s zipper closing makes Andrew feel particularly homicidal.

“Stupid,” Aaron mutters. He has Neil’s shirt pulled over his shoulders and one hand in Neil’s back. “If you—”

“—break, I’m not fixing you,” Neil finishes. There’s a half-smile on his face but he looks distracted.

Aaron pauses and turns around to look at Neil’s face. “I’m not joking. Watch yourself.”

“If you two are done trading sweet nothings,” Andrew announces. He steps into the kitchen and pretends not to notice when Neil yanks his shirt down. It doesn’t make sense that he’s trying to cover up when Neil’s shirt ends far above his stomach.

Still. Andrew walks around to look Neil in the face, strange, blue magic lines and bright eyes sparking. “Are you ready? All upgrades installed? No pending updates?”

Neil is unimpressed. “I’m not a computer. Your insults are dated.”

“Let’s go,” Kevin says from the stairs. He doesn’t even stop on his way to the door.

Andrew leaves Neil’s comment for the moment and follows Kevin toward the door. He keeps his gaze away from Aaron and Neil, who whisper by the door before Neil steps out. Andrew doesn’t care what useless promises they are making. He doesn’t.

Neil bounces on his heels a little as he starts walking. Andrew stares but Neil doesn’t give in. Finally, Andrew has to ask. “What are you doing.”

“I’m loosening up?”

“Is that a question or an answer?”

Neil widens his eyes innocently. “I was going to ask you that.”

Andrew has to remind himself that Neil is necessary. It is the only thing keeping him from—

—something.

Whoever built Neil did a good job at the most important part. Neil may not be as flawless as a porcelain doll, but he has something resembling a personality. He has enough bite to make him seem human. Neil interacts and it’s fairly obvious why Aaron was foolish enough to get attached.

Not that Neil isn’t an attractive vessel. He is very attractive, red-haired and blue-eyed, some vain indulgence of a creator giving him freckles. Neil has the body of someone that runs. He’s lean and toned and that is very hard to ignore when all he wears is skin-tight black clothing.

A stupid crop top.

“There it is,” Kevin says.

Andrew looks up to realize that they’re already at the outskirts of the industrial center.  _ How the hell did that happen? _ He presses his lips together and impatiently taps his fingers against his thigh. The gate around the center ripples with yellowy-green tekno-magic. It’s obviously protected and there are emergency alarms built in every few feet. Whatever companies are housed on this plot of land, they have enough money to burn on security.

Security. Andrew still can’t forget that he blocked out most of the walk over. That morning, Aaron had caught Andrew with an injection full of nanites.  _ What the fuck, Andrew? What the fuck? _

It was as if he was saying,  _ still? You’re still using that shit? _ Andrew had barely stopped himself from telling Aaron that it wasn’t his problem to worry about. Aaron gave up his right to worry.

Kevin snaps. “Get us through the gates, Neil.”

Neil pointedly turns to stare at Kevin. Andrew feels a cracked smile grow on his lips.  _ This could be fun.  _ Neil holds up his middle finger and then hits a red button on the gate before them.

The alarm blares.

Kevin’s face is in his hand. Neil casually leans into the speaker box by the button and presses the speaker button. When he opens his mouth, Andrew is torn between vomiting and laughing. Neil sounds just like Kevin. “Damn it. Hey—who’s there?”

_ “Hey! What the fuck are you doing on comm? Don’t you hear the fucking alarm?” _

“Of course I heard it.” Neil’s Offended Kevin voice is perfect. Andrew thinks he might be giggling.  _ Kevin is going to kill him, and then I will.  _ “I saw who set it off. Apparently we need to remind everyone about our policy on sleeping on the job.”

There is a beat of silence. Andrew isn’t impressed. Neil might as well have claimed it was a squirrel. This is a stupid scenario for a stupid robot that is probably just double-crossing them at the perfect place.

The radio crackles back on.  _ “God Fucking damn it.”  _ The alarm cuts off, sudden.  _ “Right. Well, if you jackasses can stand up straight for two minutes, keep an eye on the perimeter while the defenses reboot. I’m going to wipe this from the system and cover our asses. Fucking idiots.” _

“That is not policy,” Neil says. Andrew nearly kicks him. Kevin does. Neil shoots Kevin an evil look, one eyebrow raised and his finger a centimeter from the alarm button.

_ We’re going to die, and it’s going to be his fault.  _ Andrew laughs.

The speaker crackles again.  _ “Look, we have enough dumbasses that don’t comprehend policy when we drill it into them and their teeth. I’m wiping it. Neary will get his ass roasted anyway. I’m not in the mood for a visit from Orich. So shut up, or you can deal with him yourself.” _

Neil doesn’t answer. He waits for the speaker to click off and then sticks his fingers into the fence. Kevin’s cry is cut short when nothing happens. Neil pries the fence apart, links warping before he steps through.

When he’s through, Neil turns to look at Kevin and Andrew. “Well, come on. It’s not going to stay off forever.”

 

♅

 

The warehouse is conveniently organized.

“You sure you didn’t do this? It looks like you did this,” Neil tells Kevin.

Kevin’s fingers curl around the door he opens. “Shut up,” he hisses. “We need to be quiet.”

Neil raises his hands into the air. Kevin doesn’t see.

Nothing has gone wrong. So far. Neil assumes this means things will go to hell once they touch the tanks, or once they try to leave.

Andrew has been watching Neil since they left the Foxhole repair shop. Neil wonders if he knows Neil can see him watching, or if Andrew just doesn’t care. Neil wagers a healthy 50-50 split is probably true.  _ There’s no way he doesn’t think I can see him. Right? _

Neil toes over a security line at the edge of the shelf they’re looking for. It is an outdated mechanism but it probably helps. It at least ensures that people watch their step when they’re browsing.

Kevin pulls the first tank from the shelf. It’s only after it’s in his hands that Andrew says, “Wow. Good thing it wasn’t booby-trapped. I’m so glad you checked.”

Neil thinks Kevin blushes. It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting.

Taking the tanks is easy. Transporting them is the real task. Andrew and Kevin each have one as Neil hacks a side door and checks the camera feeds to ensure privacy.

“There are security bots in the next hall,” Neil says. He frowns and sinks a little deeper into the feed. It feels like what Neil imagines swimming in a pool is like. Just a breath and then go further down, fighting to stay there without really sinking yourself.

Kevin sighs impatiently. “Then we wipe them as we go. We don’t have time for this. The fence—”

“Yeah, I’m aware,” Neil says lightly. He’s remembering how slappable Kevin can be sometimes.

The second Neil sets foot in the hallway, a security bot comes around the corner.

The second the bot looks at Kevin, it starts blaring an alarm.

Neil turns to look at Kevin. He is distantly aware that Andrew is looking too. “Hey,” Neil says, barely managing to keep his tone even. “What the fuck, Kevin?”

Kevin stares blankly at the bot for a moment. “Run.”

_ I knew it. A fucking fiasco. I knew it. _

Neil runs. He runs before Kevin is even finished speaking. Kevin and Andrew are close behind him; Neil doesn’t bother to look after them. Andrew has Kevin. They only need each other.

Instead, Neil focuses on the bots. It is simple to fight combat physically but it’s another to do tek work at the same time. The bots are vaguely humanoid in form, but their limbs rotate and morph to allow them to fit wherever they need to chase their quarry. The things are mostly faceless and Neil has no qualms about what he has to do to disable them. They aren’t sentient. Just mobile.

Neil hops onto a bot and locks his legs around it. He manages to get a cable from his wrist into the bot’s port but the second it detects infiltration, the thing’s head explodes and Neil is thrown back. A jolt of electric tek spirals up Neil’s arm; it’s nothing compared to what he’s felt before. Neil just turns his fall into a backflip and forcibly ports into another bot. This time, he throws up walls the second he’s inside. The tek is quarantined and Neil rewrites it, dodging other bots at the same time and kicking off the wall when he needs a fast getaway. When Neil is done, he drops the walls and throws himself into a tumble to get away.

The bots crowding the hall shake and jerk before they all beep incessantly and explode. Neil sits on the floor where he came to a stop, wincing at his sore muscles and the burning in his wrist from the failed attempt.

All said, the attack takes Neil three minutes. That’s because he spent one mentally cursing at Kevin for being a moron.

“Okay,” Kevin says. The sound of sparking, post-detonation connections echoes in the hall around them. “Let’s get out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone...been a while...i keep saying this but i Promise i'll be back to weekly updates once my big bang piece is up!  
> it's posting the 19th of september!!! we are so close!!!!! it's also probably about 50k words!!!!!! WHO WANTS TO READ THAT MANY WORDS????


	6. hijack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Kevin's mistake, Andrew sends Neil out to collect another Fox. Neil and Aaron get more than they bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *WARNING*  
> Chapter contains a Moriyama.

Aaron slams a sheet of bio-tek onto the table. It clatters noisily and rocks from side to side. There are burn marks webbed across the paneling, blackish stains spreading out from the fine edge of the metal.

“This is your fucking problem,” Aaron says. He points at Kevin with a gloved hand, scalpel glinting in the light.

Andrew shoots him a look that says  _ don’t point that in his direction.  _ Aaron defiantly stares him down.

Neil silently drops his chin onto his propped-up knee. He looks down at his exposed leg, tekno-magic sparking and sputtering beneath the surface. “Shouldn’t I shut down for this?”

“No,” Aaron says immediately.

_ I don’t want you to go. _

“I’ll need to make sure the nerve connections still work,” Aaron says. He fits his scalpel into the fine blue line on Neil’s wrist and pops off another panel, this one more charred than the first. He is quiet when he mutters, “You even burned the port.”

“Tried to make a hard connection,” Neil murmurs. He watches Aaron work with distant interest. It’s Neil’s body but Aaron gets the feeling Neil could care less about the pieces he is losing.

“And why did you have to do that?”

“We ran into trouble.”

“Oh? I wonder why.”

Neil’s unburnt hand slides onto Aaron’s arm. It is a faintly reassuring touch that does nothing to soothe the fury Aaron feels when he sees the crackling mess of Neil’s wrist port. The entry is warped with heat and needs to be replaced. The fine, vein-like lines crawling up Neil’s arm are darkened and sluggish in their pulsing.

If Neil were human, he would have third-degree burns and partial loss of movement, probably permanently. Aaron drops his scalpel onto a tray and presses his arms into his eyes, taking care to avoid touching his face with his gloved hands.

“We know now that Neil’s hacking can hold up in close quarters and with limited time,” Kevin says. As if that is all that matters.

Aaron has one hand curled around his scalpel and his mouth halfway open before Wymack enters and interrupts.

“Great. But maybe next time, you could consider that you’re wanted,” Wymack says. His reply is dry and just a little sarcastic. “You know. Since the Moriyamas are apparently willing to weaponize security bots to take you down.”

Kevin shifts on his feet, obviously uncomfortable with the scrutiny. He shrugs with his arms still crossed defiantly over his chest. “We knew they were after me. They just—”

“You said it wasn’t a problem,” Neil begins slowly, as if he thinks Kevin is stupid. Aaron has to agree. “They had facial recognition, Kevin. One look and they started blaring alarms. How long do you think it’ll be before they find us?”

Whatever color was left in Kevin’s face starts to drain. Aaron can’t help the tiny thrill of triumph that floods him. It is an ugly thing but all he can think is  _ good.  _

_ Maybe now he’ll understand. _

It seems like no one really does. No one understands that Neil isn’t just a robot, like some advanced punching bag meant to take hits for humans. He is  _ Neil _ and he can hurt. He’s been hurt. If Aaron lets himself, he can close his eyes and remember every scream from when Aaron first put Neil back together again.

The nerve connections beneath the metal and magic holding Neil together are real. Neil can feel every bit of pain that he is put through, including the harsh burns on the metal Aaron pries off him.

Neil is real. He feels. He is putting his life on the line and no one seems to understand that.

Aaron silently reaches for a small tool at his elbow. He flips the magnifier on his glasses down and starts to work on removing the burned port from Neil’s wrist, careful to avoid hitting nerve connections.  _ I just want him to be fine. I don’t want to fix him again. I don’t know if he can survive it. _

“Hey,” Neil says quietly.

Aaron doesn’t look up. “Don’t move. I don’t want—”

He stops short.  _ I don’t want to hurt you. _ Neil lets the empty space stretch for a moment before he says, “You won’t. If you want...I can always ask—”

“No. I’ll do it.” Aaron’s grip tightens on the needle in his hand. “Anyone else will fuck it up. It took me ages to figure you out. They won’t know.”

It’s mostly true. Aaron does know things about Neil that no one else does, like what temperature he likes to be at and the best adjustments to make to his joints to ensure they don’t rip themselves to shreds when he runs. Aaron knows how Neil likes his panels to be tight and his augmentations to be loose. Every panel and port is something Aaron knows in detail. He could fix Neil with his eyes shut if he had to.

Someone else could work on Neil. They could patch him and get him up to speed again but it wouldn’t be the same. So Aaron shakes his head and says again, “No. I’m doing it.”

Neil doesn’t argue. He sits patiently while Aaron works, a clinging terror making his hands shake until he takes a moment to pause and steel himself. When Neil walked through the door ten minutes ago, Aaron was sure it was bad, worse than it looked. Aaron was certain he’d have to tell Neil to shut down.

It wasn’t long ago that Neil spent most of his time motionless in a corner of Aaron’s bedroom, hiding in plain sight. He was running in place. Now that Neil spends his time up and mobile like everyone else, Aaron doesn’t know how he can go back to the way things were.

Neil will die if he burns out. That is the only thing keeping Aaron from wishing Neil could be like this always. From wishing that Neil were just a little more real, so Aaron could selfishly keep Neil right by his side.

“Maybe you should,” Aaron says quietly.

Neil turns to look at him. “What?”

“Maybe—maybe you should shut down,” Aaron manages to force out. He hates having to say it. He hates that it’s true. “Just to...save energy.”

_ Save yourself. As much as you can, before something happens. Before it’s too late. _

Neil looks like he knows what Aaron is thinking. He usually does. That’s why Aaron has always been unable to make Neil let Aaron take care of him. Neil defies being taken care of because he knows what Aaron thinks, always. He knows to comfort Aaron before anything has happened. He always does.

“Okay,” Neil finally says. He ignores everything and everyone else, even Andrew glaring at the side of his face, and leans over to Aaron. Neil’s kiss is paper-dry but warm on Aaron’s forehead. “I’ll see you soon. Night.”

Aaron watches Neil lie back on the table and then close his eyes. The faint blue glow from behind Neil’s eyelids fades to almost nothing. Aaron’s fingers curl around the edge of the table.

_ Don’t look so sad when you go.  _

♅

Andrew does not feel guilty. He does feel annoyed, because Kevin said it would be fine and he has made a liar out of Andrew by association.

This is why Andrew stands in Neil’s doorway with a sandwich in hand. Not because he feels guilty. Not because Andrew watched Aaron peel apart layers of bio-tek and clean Neil up after the fight.

Neil looks up from his bed. He sits cross-legged at the foot of it, hair a tumbled mess of red and gold illuminated by the sun coming through the window. “Oh. Is that my lunch?”

Andrew takes a bite before he can think. “No.”

_ It was. _

The lingering look Neil gives Aaron seems to indicate that he is aware of Andrew’s discomfort with the situation. Neil pointedly looks away, out the window. “What is it?”

“Kevin didn’t think it was important to mention that he saw someone after he left NEST,” Andrew says.  _ It’s not an excuse. _ Neil nods as if he hears the unspoken part. “We know now they can ping him. He’s not leaving like that again.”

“We’re lucky if they don’t find us,” Neil mutters. “We’ll have to maintain the shielding on this place and double security in our weakest spots.”

“Weakest,” Andrew echoes. “We are missing a few members. Former Foxes.”

“Foxes?”

“Wymack.” Andrew shrugs off the question. “Those still out in the world should be brought in. We can’t afford to have them used as leverage. It will only slow us down. Especially—”

“Especially the people that care?”

Andrew does not appreciate Neil’s clear blue gaze. He knows too much when he looks at Andrew, and Neil does not know anything.  _ How could he?  _ He does not know Andrew’s alliances or how far Andrew will go.

Still. Neil said it first.

Andrew shrugs. “You know one of them. It’ll be your job to get him.”

“What do you want.” Aaron steps up behind Andrew, not too close but close enough to let Andrew know he is displeased.

Andrew turns and stares right back at Aaron. He doesn’t mind keeping up the contest as long as it takes, but Neil interferes as usual. Andrew has the feeling it will be a recurring character defect.

“We need to find any other Foxes and bring them back,” Neil explains. “After the last mistake, the Moriyama will be looking for an opening. Andrew said I know one.”

Aaron exhales slowly. There is a hint of trepidation in the way his brow furrows; he glances out the window as if he expects to see someone approaching, to save him the trouble. “Yeah. But I’m pretty sure Seth isn’t going to come quietly.”

“Seth?” Neil looks lost. He glances between Aaron and Andrew, as if they have switched places or something equally stupid. Like it’s a trick. “Seth was—”

“He is a Fox,” Andrew says. “That will never change.”

_ No matter how much he wants it to.  _ Andrew pointedly stares at Aaron. Aaron ignores the eyes on him and walks into the room.

Years ago, Andrew would never have expected to compare Aaron and Seth. He does now. Two people, running, pretending they could hide and leave everything behind. All this time later, they are just as involved as everyone else.  _ And what good did it do for them to run? _

_ No good at all. _

It’s a bitter reminder. Andrew always meant for Aaron to stay away. Once he was in, though, there was no going back. Denying involvement wouldn’t do anything but put Aaron at risk. It definitely made him harder to look after, when he was so far from Kevin. Andrew had a promise to keep with Kevin. Trying to protect Aaron the same way was difficult when he moved as far as he could.

_ Though apparently he found a robot to do the job for him.  _ Andrew watches Neil tug on his shorts, quietly speaking with Aaron while they plan what they are about to do. It is almost like watching a person; so much so that Andrew looks away.  _ He is not real. _

It’s what Andrew tells himself. Somehow, it feels like a lie.

♅

Neil stands at Aaron’s shoulder and stares up at Seth’s apartment complex. It looks like an accidentally warped image, the proportions too crushed and narrow to be real. The whole thing seems like it’s one breeze away from toppling over.

Neil whistles. “Is this why he’s always in a bad mood?”

Aaron doesn’t answer. He clenches his jaw and stomps up to the front door. There’s a call box to the left of the door, but it looks like it hasn’t worked since cars still used fuel. The front doors are probably meant to be locked to all outsiders, but the left one is popped out of its frame and sits awkwardly in place. The gap between the doors is easy for Aaron to reach between; he jerks at the lopsided door and pulls it open enough to walk through.

It doesn’t look much better inside. The hallways are dirty and mysterious stains make the floor sticky in random spots. Aaron picks his way through like he knows what he’s doing.

_ He does, doesn’t he?  _ Neil glances at Aaron while they walk toward a set of stairs next to a rickety-looking elevator. “You’ve been here before.”

“Yeah,” Aaron says haltingly. He doesn’t explain. Neil doesn’t push.

Seth is on their side, or whatever they have that resembles a side. He’s always been good for tipping Aaron off about attacks or active scenes that are important. He’s also fond of running his mouth to anyone that has or uses privilege or power to do things they should not. It doesn’t usually work out for him.

Aaron stops before one of the apartments on the second floor. His fingers dance nervously on his thigh. “Maybe—”

Neil knocks before Aaron can come up with an excuse. Aaron looks away, arms crossed and fingers still twiddling with nervous energy.  _ What does he have to be nervous about?  _ Convincing Seth to come along will be a struggle, but Andrew is right. Anyone left behind is collateral waiting to be taken.

There’s no immediate answer. Neil knocks again. Aaron sighs and shakes his head. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t—”

“I’m not leaving him.” Neil takes hold of the doorknob and jerks at it once, pushing his shoulder into the door as he does. The pressure of his fortified limbs is enough to send the door bursting inward with an unsteady pop.

Seth is sitting on a couch underneath a window, hands up. Leaning over Seth, one knee on the couch and one hand on the back of it, is Riko.

They both stare at Neil and Aaron as if they are intruders.

Neil has augmentations. Several of them. One augmentation kicks in, in situations like this. It’s a fight-or-flight mechanism that narrows the world to a thin, manageable line. A window through which Neil sees the present, the future, and every choice he has. Neil’s current choices include attempting to kick Riko out the window and bargaining.

Riko is an experiment. A dangerous one. He is NEST’s first copy, modeled after the president’s brother and created from a perfect blend of human and android. He’s like Kevin. Like Neil. The only difference is that Riko was first.

Aaron shouts something. Neil doesn’t notice what he says. Neil runs at Riko and tackles him; they go flying off the couch and hit the wall with a sharp thud. Seth is yelling. Neil doesn’t really hear him.

Riko looks more annoyed than angry, which is strange. He tries to push Neil away—not out the window or into something sharp, but away.

“Fucking Christ,” Seth curses. Neil blinks and then finds himself in midair, Seth’s hand on the back of his shirt. “Neil, listen to me—”

“He’s dangerous,” Neil says. “You don’t understand—”

“I do,” Seth says, raising his voice to speak over Neil. “Just sit down and I’ll explain.”

Neil calculates how to twist Seth’s arm to get away without hurting him. As he does, there’s a grinding noise from the corner of the room where Riko still sits.

Strange. Neil has never seen it before; he’s never thought it could happen. But as Seth holds Neil out of the way, Riko grits his teeth and grunts in pain, his hand clutching at his forehead. He looks—

— _ human. _

“Seth,” Riko says, strangled. “He—”

The voice cuts off almost as quickly as it came. Riko hits the ground, breathing evening out to a steady rise and fall. Seth lets Neil down and moves closer to Riko, just an inch. He holds his hand back behind him as if he thinks he’s protecting Neil and Aaron.

“Riko,” Seth says quietly. “Listen. It’s me. It’s Seth. Can you—”

Riko straightens slowly, fluidly, in a way that is almost impossible. This is the tek and magic at work. It is perfection concentrated and bottled. Riko looks up and his eyes are a flat black, crackling sparks bursting from the infected irises.

**“Target identified,”** Riko says. His voice is different, now. Silkier. Riko sounds just like all the other expensive NEST bots; he sounds like danger. Like a predator.  **“Nathaniel. Number—”**

“No,” Neil says. The word is harsh, torn from some desperate pit within him. The words in the air already echo in his ears. He can see the Court before him, an endless stretch of unmarked white populated by faceless creations. “Shut up.”

“Don’t,” Seth says. “He’s not—”

Riko darts forward. The suddenness startles Neil backward; he bumps into Aaron and realizes too late that Aaron heard.  _ He’ll know. He’ll know about me. _

There is no time to think about consequences. Neil prepares himself; his muscles tense and a coil of magic ripples through him. He can feel it burn beneath his skin like lava, sluggish at first but more liquid as it makes its way through. The magic’s path hardens and contracts, augmentations whirring in preparation for a fight. Neil is ready to kill.

Except Riko’s eyes widen a fraction and he suddenly slumps forward, body draped over Seth’s arm.

The room is silent. Aaron’s hands curl and uncurl at his side before he says, “What the fuck.”

“I told you to let me explain.” Seth sighs. He is curiously gentle when he lifts Riko’s small form off the ground to place it in a nearby armchair. Seth tucks Riko’s legs up and settles him into the seat before turning back around. “It’s not what you think.”

Neil glances between Aaron and Seth. “Wait. Are you two—? Did you just cheat on him?”

Aaron turns to stare at Neil like he’s grown a second head. Neil holds his hands up. There is a tiny hiss of air as his joints relax one more, bio-tek plating sliding out of its stiffened state. All the magic he conjured up burns restlessly in his limbs.

“Funny.” Seth doesn’t sound amused. “This is serious. Riko came here for help.”

“Oh? With what? Finding and killing Kevin? And us?” Aaron replies.

“It’s nice to know you think I’m that kind of bastard.”

“It’s nice to know you’re literally sleeping with the enemy.”

“Well, for the record, I’m not.”

“Yet.”

“Okay,” Neil interrupts, drawing the word out. Seth glances at him at takes a step back as if he hadn’t realized Neil was still there. “So I was joking about cheating, but.”

“I thought you knew better than anyone about how dangerous they are,” Aaron mutters. He looks less angry now but the alternative isn’t any better. Neil doesn’t like the disappointment on Aaron’s face. The withdrawal.

Not that Neil agrees with Seth. Working with the Moriyama is unforgivable. Yet somehow, this doesn’t seem like that. Especially not judging by the way Seth seems unconcerned that Neil would kill him if he was involved.

“Riko was made just like the rest of them,” Seth says quietly. He glances at Neil and that one look is enough to explain what he doesn’t say.

_ He knows,  _ Neil thinks. His heart hammers suddenly in his throat; if he opened his mouth to explain or warn, he thinks his heart would fall onto the floor. It feels like it’s bruised already.  _ Seth knows what I am. _

_ He knows I’m human. _

“Yeah. And he’s one of them,” Aaron emphasizes. “Moriyama. NEST. Don’t tell me you forgot that he’s the face of their little operation. He is their prized possession. He is theirs.”

“No,” Seth retorts. He sounds just a little too sharp. “He’s not all robot. You know that; you know what it’s like. He’s like Kevin.”

“Kevin isn’t the face of a massive company set to take over the world.”

“He was.”

Neil curls his fingers into the edges of his sleeves.  _ The face.  _ He remembers the old billboards. There was one right above the spot where he was slumped in an alley, deconstructed and on the brink of total death. Neil had looked up at Kevin and Riko while he lay there, broken, waiting to run out of battery and life. He had known better than anyone that the billboard was a facade. Riko and Kevin were a facade. NEST was nothing but a shiny sham for a dirty production facility that chewed up anything deemed less than perfect.

_ And I was almost a part of it, for good. _

“He gave me his shutdown,” Seth finally says. The declaration fills the silence with a strange weight that seems to push itself into all of the corners of the room.

Neil swallows. “He what?”

“He gave me his shutdown,” Seth repeats. “He wants to get away. He wants to, but NEST can hijack his system. I’m trying to find a way to remove them. It’s—”

“Impossible,” Aaron cuts him off.

Neil bites at his lip. “Not...impossible. Exactly.”

Aaron pins Neil with a disbelieving stare. “Kevin’s different. It was just his hand. Riko—”

“He has human parts,” Neil mutters. “Technically it could work.”

_ It could have worked for me. Maybe. Not now. Not when every inch of me is so tangled with what they did. _

“Doesn’t matter,” Seth says. He sighs and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I don’t have time. They’re going to release something into their systems. Some kind of package; a virus, maybe. Whatever it is will probably fry him. If I don’t figure it out by then…”

“He won’t make it,” Neil finishes.  _ Neither will Kevin. Or me. _

“He will,” Seth says quietly. “But he won’t allow it to happen. He won’t live as theirs.”

Neil looks at Riko curled up on the seat of the chair in the corner. He looks different than the billboard did, smaller, maybe less powerful. It’s not true. Neil knows how dangerous Riko could be if he wanted to.  _ If NEST activated him, apparently. _

Even if it’s a trick, Neil knows an opportunity when he sees it. “Maybe he can help. We’re trying to hack NEST. He could help us infiltrate—”

“What? No,” Seth says immediately. He shifts to stand between Neil and Riko, like blocking Neil’s line of sight will help. “He’s already on borrowed time. If he accesses their system, they could corrupt him for good.”

“They already will,” Neil says. “And you can’t fix him yourself. Bring him to the Foxhole. We can figure out how to help you, but we need you there.”

“Why?”

“We broke into one of their storage facilities yesterday,” Aaron says uneasily. He glances at Riko as if he thinks Riko might hear. “But their bots recognized Kevin. We didn’t know they were after him. Now they have a lead.”

“Of course you didn’t fucking know,” Seth mutters. “It’s Kevin. You won’t trust Riko, but you’ll trust him? You know he doesn’t tell anyone everything.”

_ None of us do. _ Neil turns and walks to Seth’s room. He can hear a distant protest behind him but he ignores it and grabs Seth’s worn duffel bag. Neil blindly shoves things into it, clothes and underwear jumbled in his hands.

Seth sighs when he comes into the room. “What are you doing?”

“Packing.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“You’re coming with us,” Neil says shortly. “We don’t have time to talk about it. So figure out how you’re going to bring Riko and let’s go.”

Seth shoves his hands in his pockets and leans against the doorway. For the first time, Neil notices the dark smudges beneath Seth’s eyes and exhaustion on his face. “If you weren’t my friend, I would tell you to fuck off.”

“You probably still will. Give me time.”

Neil tosses the bag at Seth. He only feels a little guilty about it and about everything else.  _ How many more people are going to be dragged into this? _

Seth disappears to handle Riko. Aaron lingers in the doorway, biting his lip. “Neil.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure?”

_ No.  _ There is nothing safe or certain about Riko or trusting him. Neil doesn’t really trust him, either; he only trusts that Seth will do what he must if he has to. So long as Seth is around, Neil can take the risk of having Riko near, and maybe he’ll have an advantage against NEST.

“Yeah,” Neil says.  _ I think so. _

Aaron nods. He winces and adds, “Kevin’s not going to like it.”

_ Shit. _

“Yeah. You’re probably right.”

♅

Neil sits on one side of Riko; Seth is on the other. The train shoots out of the station with a whirr that only Neil can hear, the familiar tekno-magic hum vibrating in his bones. Aaron glances at Neil from his right side, questioning. Neil sighs.

Diving is one thing. Another thing is this—dipping his fingers into the ocean, letting the water cool them, and feeling the ripples expand. Neil breathes in a measured pace and slowly plucks at the web around him.

_ Ah. There it is. _ Andrew’s connection feels predictably steely. It is raggedly sharp like barbed wire, twisted beneath Neil’s hand. When Neil tugs he can feel the spikes digging into his skin. It hurts but there is no other way; Neil needs an answer.

The immediate response is just as sharp as Neil expected it to be. A hooked line shoots out at him, protective traps springing at his presence. If he wanted, Neil could have avoided it, but he knows better than to approach Andrew without warning. The hook catches on the skin of Neil’s collarbone and tugs sharply, crackling with energy. It is probably trying to decode information. Neil isn’t worried; even something this quick and directed won’t find anything.

Neil plucks at the wire attached to the hook. He sends a willing gift down the line, simple data that explains why he tried to call Andrew. The line glows and shakes.

Finally, there is a small opening. The barbed connection beneath Neil’s fingers twists slightly, a thorn tearing at Neil’s thumb before it breaks off. It leaves a tiny opening behind and Neil carefully fits his finger over it, cautious.

**_“That was stupid. Risky.”_ **

Neil almost laughs. He’s not surprised that it’s the first thing Andrew says.  **_Don’t say that until I tell you why I called._ **

**_“I can imagine it’s another stupid decision.”_ **

Neil isn’t sure whether he is imagining Andrew’s annoyance and displeasure or if it is echoing along their connection. It’s the first time Neil has called anyone other than Aaron, he realizes, and it feels...strange.  **_We have Seth with us. He has a friend._ **

The answering wave from Andrew is very clear. Distrust, suspicion, anger. Neil waits for the response to recede.  **_“I don’t care. Who he brings is his responsibility. If we allow them in.”_ **

**_Right. You need to warn Kevin, though._ **

**_“Why.”_ **

**_It’s Riko._ **

A new wall of static buzzes in Neil’s ears. It’s enough for him to wince; his teeth feel like they’re rattling in his head. He can hear Aaron above, voice warped like it’s coming through water. “Neil?”

Neil waves him away. He focuses on the connection again and waits for Andrew’s reply. It doesn’t come immediately and Neil almost tries to explain.

**_“Is there a reason you decided to bring NEST to the Foxhole, or are you just that stupid.”_ **

**_According to Seth, he’s trying to get out. Seth has his shutdown code; that’s our contingency._ **

**_“You think Seth can live up to that responsibility?”_ **

**_He already shut Riko down once in front of me. He hasn’t woken him up again yet._ **

**_“Maybe Riko is the fool.”_ **

Neil snorts. He can’t imagine Riko being stupid enough to blindly trust Seth. Still, Andrew is right. Seth hasn’t woken Riko and he’s taking him right to the Foxhole, where a good number of people would be happy to see him dismantled. Riko either trusts Seth that much for some bizarre reason, or he’s playing dead.

**_We’re on our way. I’m hoping he can help, too. He has something to lose. He has a reason to show me how to get into the system._ **

**_“Maybe. Or maybe he has a reason to fake it and capture you. Kevin.”_ **

**_I guess we’ll find out._ **

Andrew cuts the connection. It curls away from Neil, withdrawing like a lazy vine. It’s more than Neil hoped for but he has the feeling Andrew might try and kill Riko without even letting him wake up. It would be what Neil would do.

Despite all the warnings Neil can hear in his head, he’s not as worried about Riko as he was before. In the worst case, Riko is lying and dangerous. If that’s true then Andrew won’t hold back and neither will Neil. In the best case, Riko is the most valuable asset they could hope for.

_ Maybe I don’t have to die. _

It’s a foolish hope but Neil lets it settle in a corner of his heart. He isn’t willing to completely extinguish it; not yet. He will take any hope he can find just to try and squeeze one more day out of the borrowed time he is living on.

“How’d it go?” Aaron asks. His voice is low like he thinks Riko is sleeping and he doesn’t want to wake him.

Neil shrugs a shoulder. “As well as it could.”

“It’ll be harder to convince them when we get there.”

“As long as this helps, they can’t say no. He’s not even awake,” Neil adds.

Riko is bundled into one of Seth’s sweaters; it’s way too big on him and the hood hangs low on his head. Riko is almost indistinguishable from any other person on the train this way, small and silent, knees tucked up against his chest while he sits propped against Seth. Seth’s arm is looped through Riko’s in a way that is probably meant to keep him from falling over, but it looks different to Neil. It looks comforting. Close.

This might be one of the more dangerous chances Neil has ever taken but this time, he isn’t alone. It’s the only reason he doesn’t throw Riko out the train window. That and the security lock on the window.

“Sleep,” Aaron murmurs. “You’ll need the energy when you dive again. I’ll keep an eye on them.”

_ You wouldn’t be able to do anything,  _ Neil doesn’t say. He shifts in his seat and lets his systems power down, magic receding as his limbs loosen. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi did you enjoy your surprise side dish of Riko


	7. explode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one is happy about Riko, including Riko.

Neil is in one piece when he returns. It is more than Andrew expected. He had several visions of what would happen on the train with Riko and none of them ended happily.

Neil is back, though, and Aaron is with him. Trailing far enough behind are Seth and the small body he carries with him. Andrew briefly allows himself a fantasy where it’s Riko’s body.and he is dead and out of the way.

“Where’s Kevin?” Neil asks immediately.

Andrew wills himself not to be annoyed. It doesn’t work very well. “Upstairs. He’s hiding.”

Neil raises an eyebrow at Andrew’s disdainful tone. “He’s not activated. Riko—”

Andrew raises a finger. “Don’t say that name.”

“That’ll be hard to do with him staying here.”

“Wymack has a shed somewhere.”

“Stop,” Seth interrupts. He sounds just as impatient as he was when he left the Foxhole, but…

...he doesn’t sound as angry. It doesn’t make sense. Seth’s anger was not some passing phase or black mood that hung over him. It was more.  _ You don’t just get over anger that deep. _

Neil nervously taps his fingers against his thighs. “Let’s get him into a room first. We can figure out what’s next after that.”

Dan emerges from the kitchen right on time, a plate of sandwiches in her hands. She slides it onto the table and crosses her arms as she looks at Seth. “You’re back.”

“Not really.” Seth jerks his chin at Neil. “I was asked. I came. I’m not going to stay.”

“You said yes? Just after being asked?”

“Yeah. I did.”

Dan obviously doesn’t believe him. Andrew is inclined to agree with her, this time. “What was it you got out of him in return? I know it wasn’t out of the goodness of your heart.”

“You’re not helping,” Neil interrupts. “I thought you all wanted everyone back and safe. You’re doing a great job of showing me why he left in the first place.”

Dan hesitates. It’s not much but she does, and Andrew wants to ask what this imposter did with the real Dan.  _ She wouldn’t back down for Matt. Why Neil? Why now? _ She can’t feel guilty about Seth leaving. He was an asshole; everyone knew it. Matt and Dan spent a good deal of time trying to even out Seth’s rough edges. They knew better than anyone what a risk he was.

The stairs creak. Andrew looks up to find Kevin inching down, mouth a thin line and eyes trained on Riko’s unmoving body. Kevin looks ready to run at the first sign of danger. Andrew wants to tell him it’s already too late.

“We want you to be part of the family,” Dan tells Neil quietly. “But a lot happened before you came that you don’t know about.”

_ Oh. So she’s sparing his feelings.  _ Andrew almost laughs. The concept of Neil having feelings that could be hurt is amusing. The only feelings Neil has ever shown evidence of are mischief and inappropriate affection for Aaron. Neil is a robot made for pissing people and Andrew off. So far he’s doing a great job.

“Family?” Neil echoes. He smiles without any real joy. The effect is so plastic that Andrew itches to close his eyes and get away. It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t look like Neil.

_ Since when do I know what he looks like? _

Neil waves a hand vaguely. “This family apparently isn’t great at staying together. None of you know how to work together and some of you don’t even trust each other enough to tell the truth. You expect a stranger to die for you and you won’t even do the same for one another. You’re not committed. You’re just pretending to be whole because you don’t want to admit you’re not.”

The wood banister cracks above Andrew’s head. That’s Kevin’s grip, breaking the banister into splinters while he hears exactly what he doesn’t want to.  _ The truth. _

It is true. Andrew still doesn’t like that Neil said it. “Funny you talk about truth and being whole,” he replies. “You’re Frankenstein’s robot, pieced together from whatever Aaron found on the ground or in a dumpster. What do you know about anything? Or us?”

Neil almost answers. He almost does; Andrew can see his mouth open and words curl on Neil’s tongue. The answer he must have is tantalizing. Yet just as he prepares to speak, Neil shuts his mouth and goes silent. His eyes dart to Kevin and Andrew knows, suddenly, that something is very wrong.

Neil is not who he says he is.  _ Does Aaron know? _

“That’s enough,” Matt says. He breaks the argument and the silence like he always does, too imposing to really be fought. “We’re tired. Right now, we need to get Seth and Riko in a room and have dinner. We can deal with everything in the morning.”

_ Just wait,  _ Andrew thinks mockingly,  _ and maybe the problem will go away.  _ He knows it won’t. Kevin will be just as scared in the morning and Neil will be just as stubborn and tactless.

Neil is right. He is very right about the Foxes—they are in pieces and none of them can work together. Before, it wasn’t a problem; before, Andrew was the only one Kevin needed help from and the rest could look after themselves and each other. Now, Kevin needs all the Foxes and Andrew isn’t enough to keep them safe. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t owe them what he owes Kevin.

But he can’t do this alone. It can’t be just Kevin and Andrew against NEST. They would die and Andrew isn’t in the mood to die by Moriyama. There is no facing this enemy alone.

“Fine. Tomorrow,” Neil says shortly. “Maybe by then you’ll understand.”

Neil leaves the room, as close to storming out as he could possibly be. Andrew is tempted to stop him just to make a point, but the drawn expression on Aaron’s face stops him. The memory of what Neil didn’t say nags at Andrew enough for him to wait.

_ He does have a secret, and I will know it. _ Andrew isn’t sure how or when he will get his answer, but he has to. He needs to know, before Neil does something that will kill them all.

♅

Neil looks at the table of Foxes but does not see anything. He is elsewhere, disconnected. Being on standby during the train ride home jarred him like a loose screw. He feels sideways. Reality doesn’t quite fit into place.

_ Is this what it will feel like when I die? _ He’s thought about it before. The last time Neil almost died—and maybe he did, maybe his heart stopped—he felt the same distance. It was like Neil was sitting in a boat that was unmoored and he could see the shore as he drifted away, but he had no energy to save himself. To pull the boat back in.

It’s not a cheery thought but the mood at the table isn’t exactly joyous, either. The Foxes are moments from all-out war. Bringing Riko in was a bad move but Neil knows there is no other way. Not if he wants a shot at surviving NEST.

“Explain to us why,” Dan tells Seth. It is her measured tone that breaks the silence and it is probably for the best. She has the strength to silence the others. It’s Dan’s patience that Neil doesn’t trust.

Seth taps his glass of water with a silent finger. He looks even more tired than yesterday. “I found him weeks ago. It was an accident; I didn’t know who he was at first.”

“Bullshit,” Andrew interrupts, bored. “His face is everywhere. You knew it.”

“He’s tiny. And he doesn’t look the same when he’s covered in bio gel and blood,” Seth says.

Seth’s calm reply could probably fool anyone into thinking he isn’t invested in this conversation. Neil knows him better. Seth is barely restraining everything he wants to say. He holds a lot inside and Neil has to admit that it’s admirable in the sense that it takes effort and determination. If it were Neil, he probably wouldn’t hold back.

“Keep going,” Dan says.

Seth shakes his head. “We ran into one another. I patched him up and he said he was running from NEST. He told me who he was and what they did to him. I agreed to help.”

_ That’s not all.  _ It is a condensed version of the truth. Neil can hear the empty spaces between the words. It’s the spaces that matter.

Neil trusts Seth. He’s known him for years and Neil knows just what Seth will say and not say. Seth isn’t the kind of person to hold back. He only reigns himself in when he’s angry and even then, it’s only enough so that he doesn’t start a fight. He’s willing to finish them.

Neil knows that Seth won’t hide anything dangerous or important. Not like Kevin, when he didn’t explain the real danger of going out in public or being seen by bots. Seth isn’t the type to withhold information. He sets everything out and then, with approval or not, he does what he wants anyway.

“What exactly did he tell you?” Neil asks.  _ What do you know about him? About us? _

Seth crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. He stares up at the ceiling like the answers are there. “He said Kengo fucked with his genetics using Ichirou as a reference. Riko was augmented at birth. He was enhanced as he aged. Right now, his biology is so intertwined with the tek and magic that it’s impossible to just remove one thing or another.”

Kevin’s hands are curled around the edge of the table. Neil wonders why—if Kevin is remembering his augmentation or if he is thinking about what the procedures did to Riko. Augmentation and enhancement aren’t pretty operations with neat little recovery times. They are exhaustive, painful, and grueling surgeries that usually go wrong if they are not done by experts. They have side effects. They are not meant to be compounded on humans.

Tekno-magic can change a person. It has to; it is pure energy. Funneling endless amounts of power into an organism that isn’t made to handle it is nothing but dangerous and stupid. Yet NEST still does it, and Riko was the first person they used to figure out how.

“We can’t trust him, then,” Dan says shortly. “With that amount of work, he’s not even the same person he was a year ago. Maybe he’s not even who he was as a child.”

_ Is that true? _

Neil wonders how different he is. He wonders if he is a completely different person from when he was a child. He wonders what would happen if he told the Foxes that he is just like Riko. If he told Aaron.

“Does it make a difference what kind of child he was? I wasn’t an angel,” Seth says darkly. There is a storm brewing behind his eyes. “He asked me for help. He gave me his shutdown code. He knows the danger he could pose and he took the step to ensure he wouldn’t ever hurt anyone else.”

“Nice that he suddenly grew a conscience,” Andrew says. “I wonder where it was hiding when he tore Kevin’s hand off.”

“It was wherever it goes when NEST assumes control,” Neil says quietly. “I’m sure Riko remembers it all. You could ask him.”

Kevin moves. He’s been silent, empty gaze fixed on the far wall. His attention only appears when Neil speaks and he turns to him, a hesitant question on his tongue. “What do you mean, control?”

“They hack him,” Neil says simply. “I saw it happen. It’s poisoning him from the inside. That’s why he needed Seth to help him. That’s what NEST is working on. They used him as their guinea pig to figure out how to remotely control anyone with tekno-magic.”

Kevin’s mouth moves wordlessly. He shakes his head as if there is a fly buzzing around him. “That—it’s not possible. He—”

“He can see. From inside,” Seth says quietly. “The first time it happened with me, he almost cut my throat. He didn’t talk for an entire day after. When I did repairs, I noticed the hack fried one of his converters. It overloaded him.”

“I knew the Moriyamas were monsters. Didn’t expect them to cut open their own,” Matt mutters.

“I am theirs, therefore they may do what they please with me.”

Riko stands at the top of the stairs, still bundled into Seth’s sweatshirt. He looks smaller because of it. Smaller and tired. Riko’s hair is a mess, not at all what Neil remembers, and the usual sharpness of his features is dulled by exhaustion. None of it does anything to stop Riko from looking like he is ready to snatch a kitchen knife and fight to the death if he must.

“Why is he awake,” Andrew says.

Riko stares right at Andrew.  _ He’s going to be dead within the week,  _ Neil thinks. “I am awake because I heard your useless questions about what kind of monster I am. Are you satisfied yet? Or would you also like me to peel my skin off? Allow your filthy hands inside my body? Pick me apart?”

“Don’t,” Seth warns.

It doesn’t make a difference. Riko can’t be stopped. Neil doesn’t even consider stopping him; it feels like watching a train derail, disaster in slow motion, the horror muted by an inability to look away.

“You know, they once made me pull Kevin’s hand open for augmentation,” Riko says. He is smiling and it doesn’t reach his eyes. It looks like a sharp plastic thing more likely to cut than comfort. “They made me pull my chest open when they took my heart. They kept me awake to hear me tell them what it felt like.”

Seth is already across the room. Neil watches him and wonders.  _ What is it that made him say yes? What is it that makes him stay? _ Riko is broken. He has been crushed and mangled, put back together by NEST, and left in a cobbled mess covered by a veneer of porcelain skin and seamless bio-tek. He is a danger to everyone and everything. He is going to die.  _ But Seth still said yes. _

“Enough,” Seth says quietly. He holds his hand out in some silent question no one but Riko can hear. Riko seems to deflate immediately; he leans forward, forehead bumping Seth’s palm. “You need repairs. This isn’t the time.”

“It is,” Andrew interrupts. “We need to know he’s not going to kill us. Yet. Aaron.”

Aaron closes his eyes. He must have been expecting the summons. “I’m not going to—”

“You are,” Andrew says. “If not for you, then for your precious robot.”

_ Shit.  _ Neil glances at Riko, heart racing faster, but Riko is too out of it to notice Andrew’s words. _ Riko knows what I am. He could tell someone. _ The Foxes don’t know Neil’s secret. No one knows.

No one but Riko. And Neil brought him right to the Foxhole.

“Do it,” Riko says. His words have no inflection. He pulls away from Seth and looks at Aaron. “It won’t convince you, but do it anyway. It is nothing I haven’t experienced before.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Aaron says. He stands anyway.

Neither of them have a choice.  _ I guess that makes three of us. _

♅

Neil stares at Riko so much that if he didn’t know better, Aaron would think Neil was awestruck or smitten. The staring starts when Andrew tells Aaron to do Riko’s exam and continues as they make their way to the back of the Foxhole, Andrew and Neil and Seth trailing behind Riko and Aaron.

“This is a terrible idea,” Aaron says as soon as the doors shut behind them. The repair room he stands in is unfamiliar; it doesn’t have the same tools or Neil’s hidden sticky notes, scribbles and drawings reminding Aaron that he is not alone.

Seth snorts. “Too fucking late for that.”

“Let’s just finish this,” Riko says dully. He pulls Seth’s sweater off before anyone asks, pale fingers curled into the thick material. When the sweater is handed to Seth, Riko stares back at Neil.

_ Okay, what the fuck?  _ Aaron pointedly clatters the tools in his hands a little too loudly on the table before him. The only person that reacts is Andrew, whose fingers press against the side of his temple like he already has a headache from the noise.  _ Drama queen. _

“We brought you here because you seem to have the same goal,” Neil says quietly.

Riko shifts as he pushes himself up and onto the exam table. His legs dangle above the floor. “You do not really know me. And most of you seem to think I am lying.”

It hits Aaron that Riko and Neil are having another conversation at the same time. He can hear it in the spaces between their replies. Aaron prods at Neil’s comm link, a mental tap on the shoulder that is not answered.  _ Come on. You shouldn’t be keeping secrets. _ Neil doesn’t even turn around.

_ Whatever. _ Aaron snatches a pair of gloves from the counter. “Set your foot on the table. I’ll check your legs first.”

“Yes, sir,” Riko says mockingly. Aaron doesn’t buy it. It’s the same snark Aaron heard from Neil when they first met. “I’m sure you’re itching to pull me apart.”

“I trust Aaron with my body,” Neil declares. It is sudden and Aaron can feel his ears burning. He can also feel Andrew glaring at him. “You’re in the best hands.”

“Is that so?”

Once again, there’s more dangling from the end of Riko’s sentence that goes unheard by everyone but Neil. There’s a full minute of Riko and Neil staring at one another until Aaron slams a scalpel onto the metal table just to make noise. “You are aware that we can all tell you’re talking over a private comm, right?”

The silence that follows makes Aaron want to crawl under the table and ignore everyone until NEST is burning and someone brings him a fucking sandwich.

Seth snorts. “If I know anything, it’s how stupid they can be. It’s like all the tek and magic took place of an actual brain.”

“What’s your excuse?” Riko shoots back.

“My devastatingly good looks make up for my lack of brain power.”

“I guess your eyes are fucked, too.”

Aaron’s mouth feels dry. He realizes it is because it’s hanging open.  _ Is this what we were afraid of? Who we believed would kill us all? Is it really him? _

_ He’s just a kid. _

It’s more disorienting to think that Riko is like Neil. Like Aaron. Like all the Foxes—not quite an adult, not a child. Somewhere between twenty and dead. Aaron clears his throat and holds his scalpel up, other hand spread wide in surrender. “I am going to start now. Tell me if you ever need me to stop. Tell me if you need a break.”

Riko stares at Aaron like he’s grown a second head. It looks so much like Neil, when he had no feet and his knees were broken inside-out, that Aaron feels like crying.  _ What the fuck did they do to them? _ When Aaron presses at the seam behind Riko’s knee, his question is answered in the most gruesome way.

Riko’s panel slides out of sight like nothing. Unlike Neil’s barely-cracked surfaces, Riko is all smooth edges and precision. Beneath the panels of perfect skin, Riko looks almost human. He has muscles but they are crackling with a deep, purplish-blue light. There is miniscule latticework intertwined with the muscle, a static glow indicating the magic that sterilizes the exposed organic and tek structures. It would be beautiful if Aaron didn’t know what it meant.

All this marriage of human and tekno-magic means is that Riko was once on a table, organs and muscles and bones ripped apart in detail and fused together again. It would have taken days, not hours. The surgery would have felt like being burned alive and then reconstructed like a shattered vase.  _ And he said he was awake. _

“What’s the matter?” Riko asks. His voice sounds hollow. “Never seen perfection before?”

That’s what NEST calls them. Their faces of beauty, terrible and torn apart beneath the surface.  _ Perfection. _

“Hurry up,” Andrew says. He breaks Aaron’s shock with short words and no inflection. “I am not interested in how fast he can run. We need to know he is not a trap.”

Aaron presses his lips together and nods once. He activates his medical visor, the bluish holographic interface dropping over his eyes as he starts to really look.

_ Where could he even hide a secret? There’s no room for anything in him. He’s all scar tissue and perfection. _

♅

Andrew has a headache. He has had it since before Riko arrived. It radiates on the right side of his head like a spike being driven through his eye.

Neil trails after Seth and Riko when the exam is done. He murmurs something to Aaron—probably useless reassuring bullshit—and then leaves. Aaro stands at the exam table, gloves sparking with leftover magic, and stares down at the tools before him.

Riko was right when he said perfection. Andrew could only understand half of what he saw in Riko, and that half was just memorized information from Aaron’s old books. It didn’t really mean anything to Andrew.

Not like this. Andrew pulls a chair over from the corner and gestures at Aaron. “Take those off. Get new ones. Don’t use your dirty hands on me.”

“I am a professional,” Aaron replies immediately. He pauses as he throws his old gloves in the trash, clearly debating whether or not to ask before he does it anyway. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you need that list alphabetically, or by order of importance?”

“Andrew.”

“Aaron.”

Aaron presses his fingers onto his closed eyes before he sniffs loudly and goes to wash his hands. This time, his slamming things around is not an attempt to get Neil and Riko to stop making eyes at each other.  _ What the fuck was that, anyway? _

When Aaron finishes and snaps on another pair of gloves, Andrew sits backwards in the chair he pulled over. “Implant.”

“Yeah.”

It has been years since Aaron has touched Andrew. It’s been years since Aaron has done any kind of diagnostic or repair work with Andrew. The last time, Andrew was preparing to make a plan with Kevin to bring NEST down. The last time, Aaron finished the exam by saying he was leaving.

In the time since Aaron left, Andrew hasn’t kept up with his systems all that much. He only has his implant, like everyone on earth, and minor augmentations in his arms. Andrew doesn’t really need to keep up with anything. Not like Kevin and the others do.

This headache, whatever it is, is a problem. It’s just another obstacle between Andrew and getting the job done. He made a promise, a deal with Kevin. When it’s over—

— _ when it’s over, what? What am I going to do? _

“Nothing out of the ordinary yet,” Aaron mutters. He stands behind Andrew’s left shoulder and pushes Andrew’s ear out of the way with his wrist while he works on the implant. “Wear and tear. You don’t maintain yourself very well.”

_ You think? _

“Any corrosion or—”

“No.” Aaron sighs. He drops his scalpel onto the table and reaches blindly for a buzzing tek light, clicking its tiny blade into place. “Your implant is fine. If you’re worried about Riko—”

“I am not worried.”

“Yeah, and I don’t need a drink.”

“You don’t.”

Aaron does something that makes a spark run up the side of Andrew’s head. He can feel it like lightning beneath his skin, curling around the side of his face. It makes Andrew’s hand curl around the back of the chair he sits on.

“There.” Aaron tosses the tek light onto the table and steps away. “There is nothing wrong with it. If you really don’t want Riko here, fine. But don’t look for excuses to throw him out. You’re just sabotaging yourself.”

“I think I’ve heard that before,” Andrew replies with false surprise. “Who was it, now? Dodson? Wymack?”

“Everyone that’s ever met you,” Aaron snaps back. “You say you’re doing this for Kevin. Are you so dependent on him you’ll fuck up your chances just to keep this going?”

Andrew stands and slowly pushes the chair back into the corner, letting the metal squeak and scrape against the floor. When it’s in place he steps up to Aaron and looks into his eyes. They are the same eyes as Andrew’s, but they are completely different.  _ Not the same. Not at all. _

“What I am doing is what is best. I know better than to trust just anyone.”

Aaron laughs. The sound is an empty imitation. “And I don’t.”

“You said it.”

“You know, the fact that you are holding onto this one thing doesn’t convince me that you’re not doing the same with Kevin.” Aaron waves a hand vaguely in the air. “I don’t give a shit about your romance, or friendship, or fixation, or whatever it is. I give a shit that you’re dragging Neil into this and he might die.”

“Then I guess we’re just the same.”

Aaron shakes his head. He turns away, ready to leave, but he can’t keep his damn mouth shut. “I don’t think we are.”

♅

Neil wakes to the sound of screeching. He bolts upright and almost falls off the bed he is sleeping on. Neil immediately slides his back against the wall and finds Aaron, bleary and confused, barely throwing his sheets off.

“Move,” Neil hisses. Aaron’s brow furrows but he follows the direction, ducking behind the bed while Neil inches toward the door.

The sound of a contained explosion prompts Neil to throw caution out the window. Whatever is happening isn’t discreet. Neil throws the door open and darts into the hallway. Some of the other bedroom doors are already open and their occupants stand there, tense and prepared while Neil skids down the hall.

Someone calls his name. Neil thinks it might be Andrew. “Hey. Hey. Josten,” Andrew says, voice raising as he tries to get Neil’s attention. “Hey.”

Neil ignores Andrew. It’s taking too damn long to get downstairs so he slaps his hands onto the banister and vaults over it, his stomach relocating while he drops down two stories and into the middle of the entryway.

“God damn it, Josten.”

Neil doesn’t hear. He is looking at a scene of chaos. Wymack is ducking into the kitchen; the living room is a mess of toppled tables, chairs, and random books. The path of destruction passes Dan, who is knocked onto the ground and just barely righting herself.

“Neil,” Dan barks. “Go! There’s—”

Neil doesn’t hear the rest of Dan’s command but he doesn’t have to. He can already hear another burst like a small grenade echoing in the kitchen. Neil tears through the door without a second thought and finds just what he expected.

NEST’s favorite little fuckers are antagonistic and persistent. They have no self-preservation codes and no cease and desist programming. They are disposable bots with wings, clacking metal echoing annoyingly while they dart randomly around and toss explosives at their target. Precision means nothing to the bots. It’s only about being annoying and persistent enough to flush out prey. They are just big enough to be unavoidable but small enough to fit through windows.

NEST likes to call them FLYs. Neil calls them fucking annoying bullshit robot bastards.

“Duck,” Wymack barks. Neil is already on the ground; his sensors ping sharply and he rolls out of the way of an explosive.

Neil skids to a stop on one side of the fridge, right next to Wymack. “How many?”

“Five at least,” Wymack says. He reaches out to grab a knife from the counter but it’s too far; an explosive bounces and rolls into the space where his arm was and detonates. The explosion leaves a scorched mark on the cabinets. “I think the others are covering the rest of the ground floor. They’ll be upstairs soon.”

“When did they get in? How—”

“Not sure. We’ll have to check our security sensors later. Right now we have to make sure they don’t burn the place down.”

“Yeah, I’m working on it.” Neil digs a finger into his palm and pops the panel. He slaps it around until the metallic side is facing out and uses it to check around the corner of the fridge. The reflection is warped but he can see the FLY hovering near the kitchen door.

Wymack grunts. “Useful trick.”

“Yeah. Listen, these things aren’t made for precision. Get up close, knock away whatever they shoot at you, and stick a knife in them. They’re easier to take down when they’re separated. Draw them into rooms.”

“Maybe you should tell everyone else.”

Neil sighs. He taps into his comm and lets himself drift just a little, feet at the edge of the water. He waits for the others to catch his request and then, suddenly, he is not alone.

It’s strange. Neil has never been connected to so many people before. He feels oddly intimidated by it, as if he’s standing in the middle of a circle of people.  **“Hey. Listen, these things aren’t very smart. Draw them into rooms and take them one at a time. Knock the explosives away. They’ll short you if they detonate too close.”**

The responses from the Foxes ripple along the link. Neil could distinguish them all if he had a chance; he can feel Matt’s solid voice, Kevin’s brusque one, and Renee’s reassurance. The connection closes and Neil feels strangely alone.

_ Focus. Robots.  _ Neil sighs and crouches. “I’m giving you an opening. Don’t waste it.”

“What—”

Neil darts across the room and stays low. Most of the explosives miss him but he can feel a few bounce off his back; they roll away and clack against cabinets and appliances before exploding. The FLY shrieks in between assaults, machinery whirring. Neil makes it around the robot and closes his hands around its wings.

“Ready?” Neil shouts.

Wymack throws a knife. It very much misses the FLY but Neil catches it with one hand as it passes, flipping it in his palm before sinking it into the robot. The shrieking crackles and warps before the FLY shakes and hits the floor.

Wymakc huffs. “Nice.”

“Yeah. Four to go.” Neil opens the kitchen door and immediately slams it shut. It rocks in its frame a second later, multiple detonations echoing on the other side. “Might wanna move.”

Neil takes the next bot with the knife. There’s enough time for him to get around the FLY and jam it the same way as the one in the kitchen, but there’s another robot behind him while he works. He is about to assume a little explosion is unavoidable when Aaron falls down from nowhere like a comet and crashes feet-first into the FLY. The robot shrieks and Aaron slaps a patch onto it that crackles with electricity. It burns the side of the robot until it stills, shorted and broken.

“Hey, did you fall from heaven?” Neil asks.

Aaron rolls his eyes as he walks toward Neil, pajamas out of place and irritation clear on his features. Aaron’s grumpy when woken. “Fuck off.”

Another explosion goes off upstairs. Neil sighs and takes the stairs two at a time. On the landing, Allison and Renee have already taken one bot down. The other is cornered; Kevin keeps swatting away explosives while trying to get close to it.

It’s Nicky that finally appears from a door behind the bot, a scowl on his lips and curly hair an absolute wild mess. He has what looks like a sword in his hand.  _ Where the fuck did he get a sword? _

“Shut the fuck up,” Nicky hisses. He stabs the robot and it weakly squeaks once before crashing to the ground. “God. I can’t get any sleep around here.”

Neil raises his eyebrows at Kevin. “So. The others?”

“They’re all gone,” Dan announces as she climbs the stairs behind Neil. “I don’t know why—”

A bigger explosion hits. It sends Neil stumbling sideways into Aaron, who catches him and holds tight.  _ I guess that’s why. _

The window next to Nicky is gone. The scorched hole in the wall smokes a little as a humanoid figure stands there, joints bending unnaturally as it steps into the house.

_ Now we have a problem.  _ This isn’t just a distraction like the FLYs. This robot is a Hunter model. It has all the things FLYs don’t—the decision-making scripts to assess risk, complex processes to follow multiple targets, and the motor capabilities to use both weapons and its environment to fight. It is the foot soldier based on models like Riko and Kevin. It’s actually dangerous.

“Go,” Neil says. The others are frozen in a tense tableau. “Go! Now!”

The Foxes run. They splinter off into different directions, an unspoken plan to confuse and misdirect the Hunter echoing among them. Neil is impressed right until he realizes it’s too late. The Hunter is close to Nicky. A jerky arm snaps out and grabs Nicky’s head; Nicky cries out in surprise as he’s jerked away from his bedroom door.

“No!” Aaron darts forward. Neil’s mouth opens.  _ Don’t try it, you’ll just do what it wants— _

A pale hand emerges from the edge of the hole behind the Hunter. Neil’s heart thuds in his chest.  _ This is it,  _ he thinks,  _ it’s over. They’re here. _

It’s Riko. Neil watches as Riko pulls himself up, pale legs sticking out from a hoodie that is too large. His hair is a mess. Riko’s eyes are trained on the Hunter.

For just a breathless moment, Neil thinks Riko really did betray them. Then Riko pulls his right arm back, fingers curled, and shoves it into the center of the Hunter’s chest. Neil watches the tek and magic spark violently as it coils up Riko’s arm like a snake. It digs into him; tiny black marks appear on Riko’s arm and fade just as fast in an endless loop.  _ He’s repairing himself,  _ Neil realizes with horror.  _ They put micros in him. _

“Drop it,” Riko tells the Hunter.  **“Drop it.”**

“Don’t!” Neil shouts. “Don’t use your access, it—”

The Hunter drops Nicky; Nicky scrabbles backwards. Neil sees Seth running to Riko from the other side of the hallway, one hand outstretched and a word on his lips. Time seems to condense, syrupy and sticky, and Neil can’t pull himself out of it and into a position to help.

Riko’s eyes flicker. He rips the Hunter’s chest open and lets it fall. He looks down at the mess of a heart in his hands and then, the world goes silent.

The explosion is white light. It doesn’t sound like anything. It sucks the air in and spits it back out. Neil skids along the floor and then feels himself shoved back into the wall behind him. When he coughs and opens his eyes again, there is a scorched mark on the floor where the Hunter was.

Seth is breathing heavily. “You fucking idiot.” He moves slowly, picking his way through debris. “God damn it, Riko.”

_ “Yeah.”  _ Riko isn’t speaking; not with his mouth. He is on the ground, head turned at a strange angle. The front of his hoodie is scorched and burned through. The porcelain-white of his skin is black with soot and damage. His voice is crackly and bumpy like a distant radio.  _ “I can’t… _ ”

“Go to sleep,” Seth says quietly. He lowers himself onto the floor next to Riko, one hand pushing Riko’s hair out of his face. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

_ “Okay.” _

Neil closes his eyes and lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.  _ I remember what it feels like to be that broken. But I didn’t have someone by my side then. _

And if there is one thing Neil wants to be sure of, it’s that Aaron won’t be anywhere close when Neil finally dies. He watches Seth carefully pick Riko up off the floor and all he can think is  _ no one will bring my body back from where it falls. _

_ No one will know. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all fun and games until Neil remembers he's dying amirite


	8. trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil and Riko navigate their situations with varying degrees of success and cigarettes.

He wakes because his head aches so much it feels like his implant is going to explode. Andrew hisses, one hand pressed to his temple.  _ ‘It’s fine,’ my ass. _ He stumbles toward the bathroom and slaps the light on.

Nothing looks terribly wrong. Andrew knows better than to believe what he sees. He levers the mirror on the wall toward the one he is facing and leans between the two to see behind his ear. The implant looks fine, just like Aaron said. It’s not the tek.

If it’s not the tek there’s only one thing it could be.

Andrew slams the bathroom door shut and races toward the bed. He snatches his laptop from the bedside table and grabs the plug already dangling from its side. He takes a few deep breaths while he sits there, before he even attempts to connect.

Connecting feels terrible. Andrew has wondered if it feels the same to robots, but he wouldn’t believe the answer anyway. When Andrew attaches the plug to the implant behind his ear, it feels like a needle pricking his skin. It sinks too deep to be manageable. He curls his hands into his bedsheets and tries to think of anything else.

This is why he never does any maintenance.

The laptop at Andrew’s knees beeps. The diagnostic program is fast; Andrew’s laptop whirrs as the fans try to keep the machinery cool enough. A line of flashing code flies past in the bottom right corner of the laptop screen. When it finally stops, Andrew knows exactly what is wrong.

Someone has been trying to contact him.

Andrew exhales slowly and finds his connection to Aaron.  **_Get up and get over here._ ** He doesn’t wait for a response. Andrew disconnects from the laptop and rubs at the skin over his implant. It does nothing to scrub away the feeling of the intrusion.

There is a brief knock at the door. It is followed by a lengthy pause before the door inches open and Aaron peers in, hair messy and eyes squinty from sleep. “What was so important—”

“There is something wrong, but it’s not the implant.”

Aaron sighs but comes in anyway and shut the door behind him. “Okay. But—”

“No but. There is something wrong.”

“What is it, then?”

“Someone is trying to contact me.”

Aaron is quiet. The response is processing. Andrew watches the reply churn in Aaron’s mind until he shakes his head, palms rubbing against tired eyes. “Andrew, what...why? Why would it be affecting you like this? Are you throttling the connection?”

Andrew stares. “Yes. Of course I am.”

“Wh—‘of course?’ Jesus, Andrew. No fucking shit it hurts, you’re trying to dampen...fucking processors that are more powerful than you are.”

“Not true. It’s worked.”

“Worked? How long have you been doing this?” Aaron asks, disbelieving. He seems more awake.

Andrew leans back in bed. “How long have we known each other?”

Aaron’s hands flex at his sides. He stares at Andrew’s window and the sky beyond it. It’s already lightening from black to blue-gray outside. Morning is there, even if it’s not committed to being morning yet.

“I don’t know if you don’t realize that you’re being unfair or if you don’t care.”

“Why not both.”

Aaron shoots Andrew a venomous glare. “I gave you what you wanted. I let you be free of me. Yet you still somehow enjoy being as much of an asshole as you were before.”

The declaration is startling enough for Andrew to be completely silent for a good minute. It takes him too much time to process what Aaron is saying, to realize that Aaron is an absolute fucking moron and  _ how many years have we spent like this when it could have been any other way? _

Of course, all that comes out of Andrew’s mouth is, “You must be joking.”

“Fuck you.” Aaron snatches Andrew’s laptop off the bed and shoves it onto the table. “You’re in pain because you’re throttling your implant. Take it out.”

“I need it.”

“What, for Kevin? Get a fucking phone.”

“I have one.”

“Fine. Don’t take it out.” Aaron throws his hands up. “I don’t really give a shit. It’s not going to stop. Take it out or answer the request.”

“I can’t see who it is,” Andrew says. He crosses his arms over his chest. “I need to know first.”

Aaron narrows his eyes. “I’m not asking Neil to dive just to figure it out. Kevin is putting him through enough just to be able to do a test run before the hack.”

“I didn’t ask for his help.”

“Yeah, you just showed up at our home and didn’t ask him to come like you didn’t imply that I would die if he didn’t.”

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty for saving you and everyone else?” Andrew shifts and swings his legs off the bed to stand.  _ Don’t say it.  _ “What was it you did, anyway? Ah. I remember now. You ran.”

“Fuck me for wanting a life, I guess,” Aaron snaps. “Fuck me for not wanting to spend my entire life fighting.”

“Oh yes. Fuck you. You ended up here again anyway. You should have just—”

“Stayed.” Aaron laughs shortly; there’s no humor in the sound. “Yeah. For what?”

Aaron turns and opens the door—

—and Neil is in the hallway, one hand on the staircase banister.

Andrew takes one step forward. He thinks about pressing a power button that doesn’t exist to get those blue eyes away from him. Off. He can’t look at them. He can’t see Neil seeing this.

_ Why? _

“I’m going to make breakfast,” Neil finally says. The silence is broken neatly and then Neil descends the stairs, nothing in his demeanor betraying whether he heard anything or not.

“Better go,” Andrew says quietly. “He’s what you left for, isn’t he? Go.”

Aaron looks right back at Andrew and something in his eyes says he knows. He knows something that Andrew doesn’t. Aaron’s eyes look just like Neil’s, piercing and too bright. “I didn’t know him then.”

_ I know. I know,  _ Andrew doesn’t say. He can’t admit it or anything else.

Aaron moves to shut the door behind him. “I’m glad I left. If I hadn’t, I would never have met Neil.”

Andrew speaks into the empty room as the door swings shut. “You never would have been in trouble in the first place.”

♅

“Should I be worried? More than I usually am, anyway,” Neil adds.

Aaron pauses in the kitchen doorway. Neil has a few things out on the counter—eggs, cheese, assorted vegetables. Two pans are heating on the stove and Neil pours milk into a metal bowl with one hand as he uses the other to rinse blueberries.

“Are you making pancakes?”

A faint smile curves Neil’s mouth. It’s nostalgic; Aaron feels a sharp pang at the sight.  _ Remember when it used to be just us? Remember when we were safe? Remember when we were all we needed to make it? _

“I am,” Neil replies. He drops a handful of berries into the bowl at his elbow. “If you don’t want—”

“I’m not avoiding the question.” Aaron drags a tall chair over to the counter.

“I was going to say, ‘if you don’t want pancakes, I can always make a souffle’.”

This time Aaron smiles. It feels nice, once the plaster over it cracks. His reply is the same as always. “You’re not quiet enough to make one.”

Neil seems reassured that Aaron hasn’t forgotten. He tosses a blueberry and Aaron catches it in his mouth, using his tongue to press it against the roof of his mouth. For just a moment, it feels like they are home, like they never left. Neil is making breakfast and Aaron is tired but happy, ready for whatever the day brings him. He can make it through if Neil is there to help.

“I wasn’t listening,” Neil ventures. The illusion dissipates slowly. Aaron doesn’t blame Neil; he knew it wouldn’t last.

“But you heard anyway.”

Neil shrugs one shoulder. “Not much.”

“Enough.”

“Depends on what you think is enough.”

Aaron groans and drapes his body across the counter. “I can’t do this. I just spent too much time going back and forth with Andrew.”

“Sorry.” Aaron looks up and finds Neil wincing. “Maybe he rubbed off on me.”

“I fucking hope not,” Aaron mutters.

Neil’s smile is crooked. He finishes making a pancake and slides it to Aaron as a peace offering. It’s hot but Aaron doesn’t care; it tastes like familiarity and blueberries. Lazy Sundays.  _ I don’t think we were ever normal. _

“I’m pretty sure he cares about you,” Neil says.

Aaron coughs on pancake crumbs. “Who? I didn’t know I had a secret admirer.”

“I’m not being secretive.” Neil’s joke falls just short of being funny. He turns around and crosses his arms. Aaron avoids eye contact and watches the pancake on the stove bubble around the edges. “I’m serious.”

“I don’t doubt that Andrew cares. I only doubt that his caring is of pure intention.”

“Is anyone’s? Mine sure isn’t,” Neil says shortly. “I’m selfish. If it came to it, I’d save you and get the fuck out of here.”

Aaron grips the edge of his seat tightly. The chair bites into his hands. “I know.”

“I’m just saying that he does care. Whatever reason he has, it makes sense in his mind.”

_ Whatever reason.  _ Aaron lets go of the chair and flexes his hands before him. They look the same as always, pale and spotless. He’s never been one to let them get dirty. He can’t afford it in his line of work. He always has his hands in or on something vital.

“He made a promise to me when we were kids,” Aaron says quietly. “He said he’d take care of me. Without saying as much. I didn’t listen or believe him.”

“Why not?”

“He was a stranger.” Aaron shrugs. “We’d been apart our entire lives. He showed up and I saw how dangerous he was. How damaged. I didn’t think he could do anything for me. I figured he had to take care of himself first.”

Neil shifts away from the counter. Aaron already knows what he is going to do; he has time to refuse, but he doesn’t want to. He’s too tired. Too much has happened in too little time.  _ I don’t even know if work will take me back when I show up again. I don’t know if I can do it. _

“That’s not how it works,” Neil says quietly.

“I know. I wasn’t in the place to know or think about it then.” Aaron lets his head fall forward. His forehead bumps against Neil’s chest; Aaron can feel the low hum of tek and magic beneath skin and metal. “I was stupid.”

“You were hurt,” Neil corrects. “Two hurt people don’t cancel each other out. They just make stupider decisions.”

Aaron snorts. “You don’t know how right you are.”

“I have an idea,” Neil teases. “It’s you.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t believe him and he came through. I didn’t know what to believe but all I could do was follow him—follow Nicky here. I stayed but I hated it. I didn’t want to be thrown from one problem to another.”

“I’m guessing he took it well.”

“Right.” Aaron sighs. This close, he can only smell the barest hint of their detergent on Neil’s shirt. It’s fading too quickly.  _ If I could go and bring it back, I would.  _ “I told him I didn’t want it anymore. I left.”

“What did he say?”

_ What didn’t he say?  _ Aaron shakes his head and leans back. “Doesn’t matter. It happened. It’s done.”

Neil looks like he wants to argue. This time, he doesn’t. He presses a kiss to the top of Aaron’s head and turns back to the stove. Aaron watches Neil stack up pancakes; he can hear the Foxes above them, sleepy voices and footsteps echoing in the house.  _ They’ll be down soon. _

_ Selfish, he said.  _ It’s struck Aaron before that his desire to keep Neil around is selfish. Neil is living on limited time, after all. He only has so much power before he has to go on indefinite standby. Neil will still be there. He just won’t be himself. His body will sit in a corner and Aaron will have to live with only a voice in his head and the memory of hugs when he needed them.

“You know.” Neil shakes his head. His eyes dart toward Aaron and immediately skid away. “I should…”

“Holy shit,” Nicky exclaims. He shoves the kitchen door open and props it in place. “You can cook? Holy shit!”

“I also can play chess,” Neil replies. His sarcasm is lost on Nicky.

“Man. It’s a pain in the ass to get people to cook around here,” Nicky complains. “You have to hold people at gunpoint.”

“Or swordpoint?” Neil asks.

Nicky frowns. “What? No.”

Aaron rubs his face with his hands and slides off his seat. He nudges Neil with his shoulder and waits until Neil makes eye contact.  _ Yeah. Selfish, I guess.  _ “I’m showering. Be back.”

“Okay.” Neil smiles. He bumps his forehead against Aaron’s before he turns to crack a few eggs in the pan. Nicky is staring. “So, Nicky. What do you want in your eggs?”

♅

Neil is changing in his room when Riko comes in.

He doesn’t even knock. Riko swings the door open and steps in like he knows that Neil is there, knows that Neil won’t say anything, and knows they won’t be disturbed.

The reality is that Riko doesn’t know anything. Not really. All he’s ever known has been wrong and it’s taken a few rounds of being pulled apart and put back together to make him realize that.

“You want something,” Neil says. He sounds tense. Riko doesn’t blame him.

Riko stays by the door. His hands twitch uselessly. Somehow, he wishes things were just as they used to be—problems he could touch and fight with his hands. It’s not like that now.

_ It never was, was it? _

“You haven’t told them. About you.”

“That’s what I said before.”

Riko’s hand curls. He sees Neil shift his feet, a near-imperceptible preparation for attack. “I”m not going to fucking kill you.”

“You’re right about that.”

Riko breathes out through his nose. “I am not what you remember.”

“You seem like it. Short temper, violent.”

“Well, I’m not.”

Neil tilts his head just a little. He might not even know he does it; Riko can’t say for sure. He knows Neil is looking—really looking—and it makes him want to scream. Scrutiny is not something he enjoys. Being picked apart. Neil probably knows that; he’s using it.

Riko thinks there is a perverse sort of pride in thinking that Neil is like this because of NEST. Because of what they did using Riko.

“We are supposed to be the same,” Neil muses. “Why are you so different?”

“No expense spared,” Riko says bitterly. “I am different because I am the best. I am first.”

“Does your ego get in the way of your augmentations? I’m not sure where you put it; it’s huge.”

“It’s in my ass,” Riko spits. A flicker of tekno-magic sparks up the side of his face, around his right eye, like a flaring nerve. It feels like someone is drilling into his skull. He would know.

Neil’s mouth twists into a humorless imitation of a smile. “You’re right. You’re not the same. You’re worse. Stupider.”

“That’s what you have to come back at me with? Stupider?”

“There’s nothing else to say.” Neil steps forward and it is fast—there is a blur of bluish color, then the sensation of something cool and sharp on Riko’s neck. Neil stands at Riko’s shoulder and looks sideways at him. “I could save us this drama and kill you.”

“I’m already dead.”

Neil doesn’t move. There’s something in his eyes, though, a knowledge that makes Riko’s rickety heart shudder. He can feel the tek grating.

“You’re dying,” Riko realizes. “Aren’t you?”

“I’m not dead yet.” Neil presses the thing in his hand closer to Riko’s neck. “And I don’t really need you. I saved you because Seth seemed like he wanted you. I’m sure we can help him get over it.”

_ Want?  _ Riko laughs unsteadily. “He doesn’t. And that’s besides the point. You’re dying and you don’t know how to stop it. What does Aaron think?”

Neil’s hand moves in a blur. The thing in his hand presses against Riko’s chest, just above where the heart is twisted with tek and magic. It is the true killing spot.  _ People like us don’t die from slit throats or amputated limbs. You can only kill us by taking hearts that aren’t there. _

“If you tell—”

“He doesn’t know?” Riko asks, incredulous. “Fuck, Nath—”

“Don’t call me that,” Neil says quietly. The blade presses in. Riko can feel magic flooding the spot where his skin is being cut. “You don’t get to call me by my first name, or any name.”

“Fine,” Riko snaps. His patience is worn out; he is worn out. He keeps thinking about Seth pulling him off the ledge of a rusty bridge; he keeps remembering the sensation of fingers in his head, of someone snapping his bones, of another moving his body and killing with it. “I am not going to tell. I never was.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then fucking don’t. I don’t give a shit. I don’t give a shit about how this is going to blow up in your face,” Riko hisses.  _ Liar,  _ a voice in his head chants.  _ Lies, lies, lies. _

“Why did you come here?”

_Why did you come?_ Riko bites his tongue until he tastes blood. _Do you even know?_ His fingers dig into his thigh, the tek there flexing and hardening against the resistance. He has to think about it to make it stop. He has to force his own body to behave. _It’s not mine. None of it is mine._ _Nothing ever has been._

“You don’t have to die,” Riko says quietly.

“I do—”

“Don’t believe me,” Riko interrupts. “I do not care. Do what you want with what I say. It is not my concern whether you die needlessly or not. When you are ready to stop running, come to me. I will tell you.”

“Tell me now. Maybe I’ll decide you sound honest for once.”

“That’s—”

There is a ragged jolt. It feels like before and in the few seconds between nothing and beginning, Riko wants to laugh. There is no time for him to. He feels nails scraping his brain, forcible redirection of tek and magic grating through his veins like his blood has turned into spiked wheels. He is ripped apart from the inside in a sharp jolt.

_ I wasn’t done,  _ he wants to scream.  _ I can’t go now. _

_ What if this is it? What if it’s the last time? _

Riko’s body hits the ground. He can see it from inside and away, too far to reach but close enough to feel. It hurts without hurting.  _ It’s not the same  _ he thinks, even as he can feel the invisible fingers digging in.  _ This isn’t the same. _

It hurts too much. Riko shuts himself down and withdraws to the furthest corner of his mind. The last thing he sees before his eyes shut is a familiar pair of boots coming through the door.

♅

The sky is a strange swirl of orange, pink, and yellow. It reminds Neil of the neon signs by Aaron’s place. It reminds him of Aaron’s place.

_ Our place,  _ Aaron said. He’d been patching Neil’s shoulder after a nasty fall.  _ You live here, too. _

_ I’ll die here,  _ Neil wanted to say.

Neil dangles his legs through the bars of the balcony. His forehead is pressed to the bars; they feel strange. More earthly than he is used to. He looks at the sunset through the bars and wonders what would happen if he just let go.

Fall is coming. There are a few trees outside the Foxhole, unusual near a big city and even more unusual in the increasingly metallic landscape. On the outskirts of the city itself there are few places like this, few places that cling to what used to be. What can never be again. NEST changed the world when it made its first android. It did something that could never be taken back.  _ I just don’t know if the world has noticed it yet. _

Small changes. Small, unnoticed changes over the years have made NEST the monster that it is. It started as a small experiment with nanotek and that grew until NEST had its claws in people like Kevin. People like Jean. The best of the best, they claimed, and they tried to make them better. Perfect.

The wood of the balcony creaks behind Neil. He already knows who it is by the way they make their presence known and the faint smell of vanilla. Neil doesn’t move or turn; he waits for Aaron to sit beside Neil and slide his legs through the bars.

“What happened?” Aaron asks quietly.

Neil shrugs. “We were talking and he just...stopped. They hacked him, again. I think…”  _ I think he meant what he was saying. I think he’s different.  _ “I think it hurt.”

Aaron’s fingers pick at the ragged knees of his pants. There is a gap at his thigh, the fabric attached with tightened straps. The legs are the first things he takes off when he gets home from work most days.

_ They were, you mean. _

“I wasn’t talking about Riko.”

Neil looks over at Aaron. It’s striking how little Aaron has changed and Neil recognizes for the first time that it’s not right. There are still smudges beneath Aaron’s eyes and he still looks like he needs sleep and food. It looks like Aaron hasn’t had any peace since he left, and he’s not even going to work anymore.

_ But you know better about how many ways someone can be run down. Don’t you? _

“I’m sorry,” Neil says. He’s not sure what he’s more sorry for, dragging Aaron back into this world or not noticing how much he was suffering.

Aaron’s eyes narrow. “Don’t do that. Don’t be sorry for me. You’re the one that—”

Silence. It invades the spaces so Neil shifts closer to Aaron; at least if they’re close, maybe there’s less room for anything else. Less room for the pain and the fear. “I’m not going to just let this happen,” Neil says quietly. “If I go, it’ll only be after I do everything I can to stay. I don’t want to leave you.”

“Good. Because it’s not fucking happening,” Aaron says. His voice is too rough and harsh to be convincing but Neil chooses not to hear that, just for now. Just for himself.  _ Selfish. _

Neil watches the sky again. The orange is a little more dominant now. It’s everywhere, behind the trees and the clouds. It’s not quite the color of fire but it still feels like it is fighting. It feels like the orange is burning, constant and determined.

Aaron sighs. “Nicky said...his parents, they contacted him.”

“They don’t get along,” Neil guesses.

“No. They tried to change him.”

“Augmentation?”

“Not him, but—him,” Aaron tries to explain. “I mean, he...has a boyfriend.”

“Oh.” Neil frowns, uncertain. “Not...Kevin?”

“No, what the fuck?” Aaron splutters. Neil smiles a little; Aaron’s ears are red. “Jesus. God. I don’t think…”

“I couldn’t handle it either,” Neil agrees, dry. “But I don’t judge. Anyway, he has a boyfriend. Do Nicky’s parents not like him? I’m guessing he’s anti-tek or something?”

Aaron stares at Neil like he’s grown a second head. It feels so familiar that Neil almost believes that the world isn’t falling down around them. “No. He’s...he. He is a guy. Nicky—”

“Is not straight. Yeah, what does—”

“Neil, they’re fucking homophobic. Queerphobic.”

“Oh.”

Aaron still stares. He stares for a while and then he snorts, once. Aaron presses his lips together but his shoulders shake and he eventually laughs, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes while he sags against the balcony’s banister.

It’s vaguely insulting but Neil doesn’t care. Aaron is laughing and they are fine, even if it’s just for now. “I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Neil says. “I didn’t say anything funny.”

Aaron laughs so hard he coughs. When he’s done clearing his throat he says, “Only you would assume someone is a mega-corporation drone before they’re a homophobe.”

“Yeah, well. They correlate most of the time anyway.”

Aaron snorts. “Right. Well, they contacted him. They said they wanted to talk. See him. It’s been years.”

“They’re lying.”

“Maybe,” Aaron hedges. “I don’t want to, but…”

Neil glances at Aaron. “But you think maybe it’s true, this time. That maybe they changed, this time. That this time—”

“—they’re trying,” Aaron finishes. The humor in his voice is gone. “Yeah. I know it’s probably useless but it kills Nicky. He’s so...I mean, he values his family over everything else. He’s the one that brought Andrew and me here. He tried to keep us safe.”

Neil turns away from the sky to look at Aaron. “I’m glad he did.”

Aaron presses his lips together. He is holding something back; probably another thing deep in his heart that he can’t give voice yet. “Yeah,” he finally says. “Me too.”

Neil turns away again, lets the thread of tension fall from his fingers. They don’t have to say anything. Not right now.

“So you want to go?”

“Not really.” Aaron laughs shortly. “But I’ll go for him.”

“But?” Neil prompts. “You bring it up if it were simple.”

Aaron smirks. “Rude. But you’re right. They have a condition.”

“There’s always a catch.”

“They want Andrew,” Aaron mutters.

Neil pulls his legs out from between the bars, crosses them, and scoots around to face Aaron fully. Aaron already looks exasperated.

“You’re insane.”

“Neil—”

“Andrew. Your brother, Andrew. Andrew, the person that looks at me like I ate you every time I see him.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“You’re telling me that you have to convince Andrew before you go? You aren’t going,” Neil replies. “Simple.”

Aaron has a smile on his face. Neil knows that smile. It’s the same smile Aaron had before the first time he stole Neil’s sandwich and refused to give it back until Neil had a diagnostic.

“No,” Neil says. “Whatever it is—”

“Ask him.”

“No! Absolutely fucking not!”

“Ask him.”

“Aaron, I love you, but I will throw you off this balcony and into the woods.”

A new voice interrupts from the sliding balcony doors. “Please try.”

Neil shuts his eyes.  _ Please, God that does not exist, make it go away. _

When he opens his eyes, Andrew is still there.

♅

Aaron makes the wise decision to leave. Andrew watches him pull his legs up and gingerly skirt around Andrew. He looks like he might be trying not to laugh.

Neil sends Aaron’s back a dirty look. Andrew purposefully steps between Neil and Aaron; the dirty look sticks to Andrew for a few seconds before it’s replaced by a neutral expression. “Hi, Andrew.”

“Hi, Neil,” Andrew mimics.

Neil gingerly slides his legs through the banister bars and turns away. Maybe he doesn’t want to see his death coming.

Andrew slowly makes his way to the banister. If Neil is trying to ignore him, it isn’t going to work. Andrew fishes around his pockets for the cigarettes he knows he has. He can feel Neil watching out of the corner of his eye.

The plan to look purposeful and stay right there is ruined when Andrew realizes he doesn’t have a lighter. It’s worse when he realizes that Neil has realized. Neil raises his eyebrows innocently, expression schooled, and offers his hand. “Want me—?”

“No,” Andrew says immediately. A few expletives float through his head before he manages to correct his answer. He can’t do this without nicotine. “Fine.”

Neil waits. He waits some more.

When Andrew gets sick of it, which doesn’t take long, he says, “What?”

“It wasn’t clear,” Neil says, as if that was obvious. “Yes or no?”

Andrew contemplates smacking Neil in the face. It would probably feel good for two seconds, but it’s just a passing itch. It is nothing. It is also stupid and Andrew is not stupid.

Not like that.

“Yes.”

Neil nods. He reaches for the cigarette and when his hand is right at its end, he snaps. There’s a click-snap just like the sound of a lighter and then the cigarette burns. Andrew takes a drag and exhales before he says, “Do they make models like you that double as toasters?”

“I don’t know but I can get pretty hot.” Neil shrugs.

The itch to smack Neil returns.

The burning cigarette is about as bright as the sky. It looks like the world is on fire. Andrew shoves his hair away from his face, irritated. It can’t be cold fast enough.  _ Shit is always on fire.  _ It would be preferable for things to stop.  _ Or at least let the fires be ones I start to keep myself _ —

— _ what? Warm? _ Warmth is not something Andrew has the capacity for.

“What would make you trust someone?” Neil asks. If he is trying to be casual, he fails miserably. Andrew fixes him with a stare that Neil does not notice because Neil is staring at the sun.  _ Figures. Idiot. _

Andrew waits for another drag before he answers. “By someone you mean you.”

Neil’s brow furrows. He glances at Andrew like he can’t help himself— _ of course he can’t help himself _ —and then he says, “I meant someone. But I guess that includes me.”

Andrew scoffs. He pinches his cigarette too hard and watches the burning end flicker. “The truth. I only trust the truth.”

Neil looks back at Andrew with narrowed eyes. Andrew can almost see the confusion on his stupid face, right behind those bright blue eyes.  _ Stupid. _ “Clearly.”

“Truths, Neil,” Andrew finally says. He gives in just a little, because he thinks he might go insane otherwise. “I trust in what I give for what I get.”

Neil rests his head against a bar to better look up at Andrew. Maybe he is beginning to understand; he is silent for a while. Andrew takes the opportunity to focus on the evening breeze instead, the smell of Nicky’s tacos drifting from a downstairs window. Dinner will be ready soon.

_ All this. All this gone,  _ Andrew thinks.  _ Everyone. _

“Okay,” Neil finally says.

Andrew taps a finger against his cigarette. Somehow the answer makes him itchy. He feels like he’s had too much coffee; he feels jumpy and distracted.  _ Why? I’m not taking a dose.  _ “Do you even know what you are agreeing to?”

“Yes.”

Andrew’s mouth twists in annoyance. He has to squash the words he wants to say; they give away too much.  _ Why? Why are you even here? _

_ Why did you stay? _

“Okay,” Andrew echoes. “What is your real name?”

“I thought you didn’t think I was real.”

Andrew grins.  _ Oh. This might be fun.  _ “Humor me.”

Neil looks like he wants to stick his middle finger in Andrew’s face. “Call me Abram if you have to. If you need a last name, Josten.”

“Neil Abram Josten,” Andrew recites slowly. He can see Neil shudder. It pisses him off for some reason. “Quaint.”

Neil slides his hand down the banister by his face. Andrew has to actively not pay attention to the movement but even then, it’s too late. He already saw. He is already thinking about it.

_ Abram. Abram, Abram. _

Andrew tells himself to shut up.

“I used other names when I was running,” Neil says. “I—”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Andrew says. He points with the cigarette in his hand.

Neil leans in and inhales.

_ I didn’t fucking ask for that, either. _

Andrew almost crushes the cigarette. Neil doesn’t seem to notice, as always, because he is an  _ idiot _ and Andrew wonders if he could make the jump from the balcony to the first floor without breaking his legs too badly.

“Nicky wants to visit his parents,” Neil says. The fun dissipates; Andrew crushes the cigarette in his hand. “I think Kevin, aside from Aaron. Me.”

“They are not going anywhere.”

“Not without you.”

Maybe Neil is answering, but it sounds like he is asking. Andrew laughs sharply and flicks his cigarette off the balcony.

Neil is on his feet in a second. He stands on the balcony, perfectly balanced, and leans over the edge to catch the cigarette. Andrew doesn’t realize he is reaching out to pull Neil back from falling until he sees his hand there, right before Neil. Neil, who is illuminated by the red-orange sun like it’s fire. Like he is on fire.

Andrew drops his hand.  _ Don’t. _

Neil turns like the banister isn’t two inches wide and drops back onto the balcony. “You shouldn’t throw things away. Someone else may want them.”

Andrew watches Neil walk back into the house and thinks,  _ don’t. _

He already knows he’s going to say yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like such an asshole for laughing while i wrote the dialogue sections at the end but you know what fuck it i needed a laugh


	9. empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes taking a chance ends in blood.

Andrew’s car is sleek and black. As Neil stares at it, he finds that he’s not really surprised—it’s not surprising that Andrew doesn’t use public transportation and it’s not surprising that Andrew would have a car that looks expensive and lethal. It fits.

_ But how would I know that? _

Aaron’s leg is jumping, his heel bouncing against the pavement as Nicky and Kevin navigate their seating arrangement. Neil glances at Aaron and brushes his fingers against Aaron’s elbow. Aaron casts a quick glance at Neil, but he doesn’t linger. He’s too nervous.

“Breathe,” Neil says.

Aaron exhales sharply. “It’s not that simple.”

“It is.”

Andrew pulls the driver’s side door open and stands there. He has to move toward the hood of the car to look over at Neil and Aaron. “In.”

_ Well, this will be a pleasant trip. _ Neil goes where he is told and ends up between Aaron and Nicky, who are the worst people to be stuck between during a two-hour car ride. They’re both anxious beyond words and Neil feels insane just experiencing the waves of nervousness rolling off them.

No one speaks. There’s nothing to say anyway, or at least nothing that anyone is willing to say. Neil preoccupies himself with looking out the windshield and drifting, mind half-submerged in the crackling energy of the net around him.

Riko hasn’t woken up yet. He is still in limbo; Wymack is trying to figure out what happened. Neil knows it was a remote hack again, but it was different this time. It wasn’t control to hurt someone else. It hurt Riko.

It’s unsettling to care even a little about Riko. He has always been a dark name floating around Neil’s world; Riko is a ghost of the Moriyama empire, crafted to what they want and need.  _ But he showed up and all he said he wanted was to be free of them.  _ For Riko to refuse his creators must be infuriating, embarrassing. Somewhere, Tetsuji is planning just how he will deconstruct Riko when he finds him again.

_ Is he right? Is there a way for me to live?  _ Neil has never allowed himself the hope; it is a stupid, unfounded hope that does nothing but imposes a risk of lowering his defenses. There is nothing Neil knows better than survival and if he does not live each moment like he is hunted, he knows he will be captured. Deconstructed. Unlike Riko, Neil is not the first. He is not the most precious. If Neil is captured, the Moriyama will not be careful with him. They’ll rip him inside out.

“Hey.” Aaron’s voice is quiet but it’s enough to bring Neil back to the surface. They’ve stopped in front of a house; Neil wonders how long he drifted.  _ Are we here? _

Neil surveys Aaron’s face. He can see lines of tension, uncertainty, and a glimmer of defiance.  _ He’ll need that.  _ “What?”

“Thank you.” Aaron turns to look at the house. Nicky has already stepped out; he hangs by the car, hands curled at his sides. “For coming.”

“You asked me to be here,” Neil says. It is that simple. Even if Aaron hadn’t, Neil doesn’t think he would have stayed behind.

Aaron looks down at his lap and his hands. The red medic implant on his left hand glows dully, a reminder that this is not where Aaron belongs. This is not their life.  _ But we’re here.  _ “Yeah. I need you to be here.”

“When you need me, I stay.”

“If I always do?”

The way Aaron looks at Neil makes his heart stop. It’s almost as if Aaron knows.  _ He doesn’t,  _ Neil reassures himself. Neil still can’t shake the feeling that Aaron knows somehow, or he suspects.  _ It’s just the battery. He thinks it’s just the battery. He doesn’t know. _

Neil shrugs. “You don’t. But I’ll be here anyway.”

Aaron presses his lips together. His hands curl into the fabric of his pants and then he swings the car door open. Neil watches him go for a few seconds before he slides out behind Aaron, closing the car door as quietly as he can.

The house looks typical, except maybe too clean. It’s white and pristine, a fence enclosing the front lawn. There are other houses around but there doesn't seem to be cars. Everyone is probably gone for work. Neil is already calculating, tugging at the web in his mind to estimate their surroundings. The neighbors are all out. The closest living thing is a dog three doors down. The neighborhood is mostly empty, save an elderly woman watching television the next block over.

_ No witnesses.  _ Neil shakes his head to dislodge the thought. He hasn’t met these people yet, so he can’t make any estimations about their character or whether they could have been touched by NEST yet. They undoubtedly have NEST systems in their house, but those are low-level and won’t be a problem. Neil is already running interference with what little of his systems he can spare.

“This is a mistake,” Nicky says suddenly. He stands before the front door with one hand lingering midair, unable to commit to knocking. “We should—”

“Do this,” Neil says. He doesn’t make it a command; he only wants to interrupt before Andrew says something undoubtedly unhelpful. “Or let me.”

Nicky glances at Neil. He looks like he wants to let Neil knock, but there is a characteristic refusal in his eyes that Neil guesses is familial. He’s seen it in Aaron, too. With Andrew, it’s obvious. Nicky raises his hand and knocks. Neil lingers behind everyone else; his implant is itchy and he can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching. He mentally loosens a gap in is shields and lets the suspect breeze pass.  _ Something’s going on. _ He’d guessed that the invitation from Nicky’s parents was too well-timed to be innocent, but knowing he’s right doesn’t make things any better.

The door opens. The man that stands there looks severe, but not in a dark way. He looks like someone that never smiles, a man without any real joy in his body. The woman looks forced. Her smile is taught when she sees her son— _ her son,  _ Neil thinks—and she extends her hand as if she’s meeting a stranger.

“It’s good to see you,” the woman says.

It’s painful and awkward to watch. Nicky is obviously trying to force words out, swallowing visibly as he contends with the image of the two people that are supposed to love him acting like he’s someone they don’t know. “Hey, mom. Dad.”

“You brought other people,” Nicky’s mother says. She casts a sweeping glance over the group before her, gaze lingering on Neil’s shorts and Kevin’s gloved hand.

“My friends,” Nicky corrects unsteadily. “They’re my friends, Mom.”

Nicky’s mother nods vaguely. She looks more likely to be sick than invite them in, but she finally does. “Come in. Dinner’s ready.”

Neil glances at Kevin and whispers, “It’s five in the afternoon.”

Kevin looks like he is physically fighting the reply he has prepared, which is incredible, because Kevin never passes up the chance to be right about something. Neil watches Kevin jerk his shoulder in a forced shrug before following the others inside.

_ I’d rather be dismantled than have dinner.  _ Neil walks inside anyway. He tunes the conversation to a background channel and focuses instead on the whisper of dissonance echoing along the threads he has tied to the Net. Something is waiting for him like a spider, picking its way as quietly as it can. Neil can still hear it. He can hear everything.

It’s obvious even without paying much attention that Aaron is the family favorite. His aunt and uncle gravitate toward him like he’s a life raft; their eyes linger on the red cross glowing on Aaron’s upper arm like it’s a prize they’ve won. Neil is tempted to dig his heel into their necks and force their eyes away.

Aaron probably notices Neil’s annoyance. His fingers brush Neil’s wrist on the way to the table, a reassuring touch followed by a brief message along their channel.  **_“Don’t give them a reason. I can handle them.”_ **

**_You shouldn’t have to._ **

Neil leaves it alone anyway. He slips into his seat at the table, annoyingly far away from Aaron. Kevin sits between Neil and Andrew, who hasn’t really said anything yet. That is probably the most uncharacteristic thing, aside from the way Andrew’s fingers keep pressing into his temple.

_ Something is wrong. You can feel it. You know it. _

_ Are you going to do anything about it? _

Neil doesn’t want to do something. He wouldn’t care if it were anyone else; he would find the information he needs and take it without a second thought. This is Andrew, though. Andrew, who made a promise, a game, and Neil accepted. Agreed. They are tied to something, together, and Neil hates the thought of breaking that fact.

But something is wrong, and Neil can’t ask Andrew now. His fingers grip the edge of his chair, wood biting into his skin. Neil looks at the man and woman that sit at the end of the table and thinks.  _ I won’t betray Andrew. Them, I couldn’t care less about. _

Diving is tricky in the best circumstances. Diving while pretending not to is even more challenging. Normally, Neil wouldn’t bother to hide; he has always tried to dive in the secrecy of his and Aaron’s apartment. Neil has never paid much attention to what he looks like when he dives. Now, Neil is aware of every flickering light coming from his body and the stark silences between awkward words that Nicky and his parents speak.

Neil does the worst thing. He inches away slowly like he is unmooring a boat. Every centimeter that he slips away feels like nails dragging against chalkboard, and he is the chalkboard. The hooks of the Net are barbed and they catch on Neil’s skin as he immerses himself. When he is far enough, every move he makes yanks at his skin and tears at his body.

“What are you doing now?” Nicky’s mother asks. She sounds like she is speaking from above water that Neil isn’t submerged in.

Nicky anxiously rubs his finger along his fork. “I’m at the Foxhole, still. Doing some minor repair work for customers, mostly cosmetic.”

“You should move,” Nicky’s father says. “And don’t do cosmetics. Vanity is fickle and so are the people that indulge it.”

Neil is tempted to send a virus to Nicky’s father. He has to force himself to turn from that particular thread and enter a different one, instead. It’s simple to infiltrate the Hemmicks’ home system; they have no security and only one loop. They have the basics and that makes it simple for Neil to find what he is looking for.

Nicky clears his throat. “Well, Andrew’s the one that does the real...mechanical repairs.”

The gap between words is probably Andrew kicking Nicky’s shin. Neil winces in sympathy. Nicky’s mother glances at Andrew but her eyes dart away just as quickly. That catches Neil’s attention.  _ She’s guilty. Why? _

_ What did they do? _

Neil works faster. He knows his seams are probably glowing a little brighter; Aaron frowns and looks down the table at Neil. Neil reduces the power to his augmentations and lets his system balance again. Constant power is the simplest way to go undetected. Aaron turns away after a few seconds, probably chalking it up to a trick of light.

_ Police time.  _ Neil grudgingly find the right thread at his feet; he always leaves it tied, the barbed and ragged thing constantly gnawing at his ankles. All it takes is a tug for him to be yanked into the distance in a flash. He holds on tightly, blood that isn’t real dripping from his clasped hands. When the tug stops, Neil slams his hand against the door before him. It takes his blood like it always does.

Neil gingerly drops the names into the doorway and listens until he hears them drop like stones in a pond. The ripple that echoes back at him is quiet but dissonant.  _ There’s something there. Connected, but not too strong.  _ Neil dips his fingers into the tar-like substance lapping at the bottom of the door. It crackles against his skin, but Neil rebuilds just as quickly as he is eaten away. This kind of virus won’t damage him. It only slows him down.

Answers ride to the surface like dead fish in an oil spill. Neil fishes them out one at a time, piecing the code together. The cracked collage slides beneath Neil’s fingers until he has an image as ugly as its pieces. He watches the words and reports float around as the information streams through his mind.

It’s disgusting.

_ It’s not what they did. It’s what they didn’t do. _ Neil sees a name float by and he grabs it, crushing the slip of code in his hand. He isn’t sure why he does it other than to have just one second of satisfaction, one moment of glorious destruction where the name isn’t there and all that’s left is dust. Neil lets the code crackle and sputter its life into the air.  _ They had one fucking job. _

“—listen,” Aaron is saying. Neil looks up through the murky sludge above him. “If you did, you would know—”

“God has given us all the knowledge we need,” Nicky’s father says. “Nicholas. You would know that, if you returned to Him. You would know everything you need to.”

“Let’s just—” Nicky’s mother interrupts. She stops herself and Neil watches her eyes dart toward the kitchen. “Let’s take a moment. Dessert is in the kitchen; I’ll bring it in. Aaron, will you help clear the table?”

Aaron’s disbelief would be an answer all its own. Neil cuts the weights at his ankles and lets himself drift back to the surface, faster as he comes closer. Andrew leans back in his chair and then slides silently out of it. He looks like he’s going to leave and smoke, or possibly look for something stronger than water to drink.

_ I can’t let him go. I can’t.  _ Neil wills himself to move faster. When he stands, he’s still too disconnected; he drops a fork. Aaron says something and bends down but Neil still sees Andrew walking away from the table.  _ Don’t say anything. Don’t. You’ll ruin it… _

“—ing. Neil? What are you doing?” Kevin hisses under his breath. Neil shakes his head.

_ I can’t.  _ “He’s here.”

Neil knows that Kevin knows. He knows because Kevin’s face drains of color and then Kevin turns in slow motion to look at Aaron.

Neil doesn’t have the time. He is finally almost there; he rushes toward the stairs and finds Andrew halfway up them. “Stop,” he says. “Don’t.”

Andrew turns. He looks flat, distant, like he’s going to tell Neil to fuck off and leave it at that. But Andrew sees Neil, sees his face, and he disappears just like that. He is gone and all that is left is Andrew’s body, gaze blank and face emotionless. “You know.”

“He’s here,” Neil insists. He stumbles up the steps and expects Andrew to stop him. He expects something but he is able to slip past Andrew and to the top of the landing. “I swear. We have to—”

“Shut up.”

“Andrew, p—”

“No.” Andrew points and his finger twitches just enough to shake. He curls it back into his fist and then holds his hand between them, pressing at the invisible weight there. “No.”

“Bu—”

Neil doesn’t finish. His voice is suddenly choked from him and he is yanked backwards. He can see his own hands stretched before him not because he is grasping, but because the movement is so sudden he instinctively prepares to fall.

Neil can almost see surprise on Andrew’s face and that is the worst part.

Someone drags Neil through a door.  _ Not someone.  _ He knows who it is, he knows the name. That doesn’t matter. Neil is solidly aware that he can overpower this person, once the shock and confusion wears off. He is about to when Andrew walks through the door and Neil feels something cold against his neck.

The man holding Neil laughs. “Don’t. I’m not above killing it. I have a virus.”

Andrew lingers in the doorway. “That is not what you want.”

“True.” The fingers on Neil’s neck rub against his skin.  _ I’m going to cut them off when I’m done. _

“So, get rid of it. It’s in the way. You don’t have the time.”

Valid points. Empty, dark reminders.  _ He’s done this before.  _ Neil can feel his muscles shaking with the effort of keeping them still. All he wants is to burst into action and he can’t. If Neil dies here, everything else dies with him. 

There’s a way.  _ I don’t want to. _

Neil shuts his eyes and sends the message to the others. He sends the place, the person, everything. He lets the warning leak. The man that holds him laughs darkly. “Well, look at that. He’s trying to save himself.”

There’s another hand pressing against Neil’s back. It moves suddenly and then Neil experiences the horror of knowledge and realization.  _ He knows. He knows me. _ There’s a sharp noise like the snap of bone breaking and then Neil hits the floor, the pain of tek being forcibly shut off hitting him like a truck going eighty miles per hour. Neil can suddenly feel every inch of his body in a way far worse than he’s felt since Aaron found him. The world is muffled but the pain is multiplied, magnified and intense.

_ Don’t.  _ Neil tries to move his hand. His arm is on fire, two seams above his elbow protesting. There is no buffer between the repair that was made and his body. He can feel every muscle, every cell where it has been sewn and stapled together again.  _ Don’t do it. _

The man reaches for Andrew. Something is glowing in his hand; it sounds like shattering glass.  _ Virus.  _ Andrew staggers back against the wall.

Someone shouts. Neil can’t see; he can’t move his head. He only recognizes Aaron by his boots. The others are in the doorway but Aaron’s glowing hand comes into focus and then there is a struggle, shoes scuffing against the floor in slow motion. Neil tries to force himself upright. Everything is pain but it doesn’t matter.  _ You know pain and so do they. Pain doesn’t matter. You aren’t allowed to stop for it. _

Neil doesn’t really see. The world is a haze but he knows who he is looking for by their unfamiliar presence. He hooks an arm around the man’s chest and pulls him backward, muscles screaming and tensing. He burns with magic that has nowhere to go and it flares from under his skin. He thinks the man screams at the burn.

Aaron darts forward between Andrew and the man. His red hand blazes and then there is red everywhere; it clings to Neil’s eyelashes and paints the wall in uneven arcs. Neil blinks distractedly. He can feel his body humming; the magic has overcome the pain now, but it doesn’t feel good. It feels like an invader. He is not Neil; he’s just a form holding too much magic, too much power.

“—lp. Have to—n his—n.”

Nicky is saying something. Neil can’t tell what. He watches Kevin’s face come into focus.  “—l. Hey. Can y—r—e?”

There are other muffled voices and then Neil feels Kevin’s hand slip around the back of his neck.  _ Remember when you thought he would kill you? Remember when you thought he would be the end of it? _

A sharp crackle hits Neil at the back of the neck and his entire body seizes, tek snapping back into function without warning. Neil feels an involuntary cry leave his mouth before he clamps his jaw shut and curls onto his side. His body does not balance carefully and it is not easy or simple; he feels the pain of reconnected tek rolling through him endlessly.

Neil shoves himself up. He doesn’t care that his legs feel like they were just chopped off and reconnected, and he doesn’t care that his arms feel as if they’ve been pulverized and then inflated. Neil stumbles toward Aaron in the corner of the room—

—but Aaron is with Andrew, who says something that doesn’t quite make it through Neil’s ringing ears.

_ It’s what you wanted. _

Neil lifts a hand to his ear to silence the voice coming from inside his head. Instead he finds blood, warm and coppery.  _ It’s what you wanted. You don’t have the right to choose life. You are going to die. Remember? _

“Neil,” Kevin says quietly. He looks scared, truly scared, for the first time since Neil has seen him again. “You’re—”

_ Dying.  _ Neil swipes his hand beneath his nose to clear away the blood that leaks thickly from his nostrils. He doesn’t answer. Nicky stands in the doorway, mute with horror, and his parents are right behind him.

_ They did this. Them. _

Neil strides toward the door. He hears Kevin yank Nicky away and then Neil grabs both of Nicky’s parents by their necks and starts to drag them toward the second floor landing. He barely registers their struggle; the pulsing magic that had nowhere to go floods Neil’s muscles, augmentations steely as he pumps all of his energy into bare strength. The man and woman that Neil holds cough and splutter in panic, kicking and hitting to get away. The blows just bounce off him.

“This is how it will be,” Neil says. He can see the magic crackling over his limbs, bright blue and electric, but it doesn’t feel like he is holding these people off a balcony. “You will never contact Andrew, Aaron, or Nicky again. Never. You will not contact any of the Foxes. You will not even think about them.”

Neil dips the couple further toward the edge. He hears a faint protest behind him, some remnant of Nicky’s broken hopes making a halfhearted attempt at escape. It makes Neil angrier. “Do not attempt to speak to authorities,” he adds. “This will be taken care of. If you try, I will know, and I will kill you.”

“Neil,” Kevin says. There is no argument in his voice, only warning. Not a warning to stop, though. A warning that they need to go.

Neil pushes the pair in his hands onto their knees and backs them against a wall. “Look into my eyes.” They predictably do not. Neil holds their chins a little tighter than necessary and shoves their faces toward him. “Look in my eyes and know that if you try anything, directly or indirectly, I will find you. I will find you and I will not kill you quickly. I will not give you peace. I will pay you back, year for year, and I will compound upon you the level of agony you have inflicted upon those that you were meant to protect. Am I clear?”

Neil does not need to hear the answer, but he sees it anyway. He can see in the widening of the couple’s eyes and the paleness of their faces. Neil knows that Nicky’s parents are not parents any longer, not that they ever were; they are just people and they are a threat.

_ I would kill them right here just to make sure they never come back. _

“Let’s go,” Neil says. He waves sharply down the stairs and does not turn until he hears the last person exit the front door. Neil crouches in front of the man and woman before him then, and he looks into their eyes. He releases his virus and his surveillance into their systems within a millisecond, the failsafe pinging in his mind to signal its completion.

“I never want to see you again,” Neil says, and then he walks downstairs and leaves the house.

♅

Riko doesn’t wake. He never does. He is always awake, and he always sees and hears everything. He feels everything.

For the sake of his sanity, however, Riko calls it waking.

Seth is there. He’s been there since they first met and Riko still hasn’t categorized this...whatever it is, yet. Riko blinks and finds Seth with his eyes closed, feet propped on the bed and the rest of his too-tall body tucked into a comfortable recliner.

Without looking, Seth murmurs, “How do you feel?”

_ What do you think, genius?  _ Riko’s typical answer is there, even if it’s not at the forefront. It drifts at the back of his mind, within reach, but Riko lets it slip away into the darkness. He has no need for it. “Fine,” he says instead. “Alive.”

Seth’s eyes finally open. He doesn’t move from his strangely relaxed position, arms laying across his stomach. “You sure?”

Riko sighs through his nose and levers his body upright. He doesn’t experience nausea the way pure humans do; he never has. He can clearly remember vomiting on two occasions, and both were when he was detached from himself in surgery. Neither instance was pleasant.

“What happened this time?”

Seth drums his fingers against his arm. He doesn’t answer immediately. “Seems like another hack. They didn’t have you attack, though.”

“So it was a data mine. They know where I am.”

“No.”

“No?” Riko curls his fingers into the sheets around him. His instinct is to tear at them until all that is left is shreds. Maybe then he could bandage the pieces of himself that are falling apart. “What was it, then? What could they fucking want from me, other than everything I am to them? Other than where Kevin is, or Neil—”

Seth pulls Riko against his chest. Riko doesn’t remember Seth standing or moving at all. Not that it matters; Riko lets himself be nothing for just one moment, stops holding himself upright and lets Seth do the work.  _ Do not lean on something that crumbles. Humans crumble, Riko.  _ Riko shuts his eyes and imagines that they are alone on an island. No voice or tek or magic can reach them. It is just them, alone, with nothing to run from or toward.

_ I want to be better than this. _

It’s probably the insidious little human failing that Tetsuji picked up on when Riko was created. This wish to be better, this need to be the best—Tetsuji saw it and fostered the black seed until its roots were as intertwined with Riko as the tek they fused with him. It is what gave Tetsuji the key to hack Riko and make him do things, hurt people.  _ It’s how they made me knock Kevin down, again and again. _

Riko opens his eyes. He looks over Seth’s shoulder and he can see his own hands, pale, perfect palms designed to destroy. “I hate myself.”

“I know.”

Robots cannot cry. It does not make sense. Riko can. He is not a robot, even if he is not human. His tears are useful to Tetsuji, too. They are an indicator. They’ve always told Tetsuji when he is right at the sweet spot of absolute agony, when Riko is breaking as he is broken.

As Riko’s tears fall onto Seth’s shoulder, he wonders why he expected another answer. Nothing will help. He knows better. “If I hadn’t woken up, they wouldn’t have stolen what they did,” Riko says quietly. “I don’t even know what they stole.”

“We can find out.” Seth leans back just slightly, pulling Riko in as he settles on the bed.  _ Like he’s here to stay. Liar.  _ “And then we will destroy them.”

“I’m doing it now.”

“Wait—”

Riko doesn’t wait to hear what Seth says. He forcibly shuts himself off, sinking into his body in some twisted version of sleep paralysis. Despite the horror of being trapped inside, Riko feels a tiny seed of triumph at controlling this change. It is not NEST that did this, or Tetsuji. It is Riko. He is the one breaking his bones to set them.

Water. To Riko, it all feels like water. He’s heard others describe it as a net or a web. Riko thinks it probably has to do with how much he is tangled with his tek; he cannot extricate himself from the connection if he tries. To Riko, the information and systems around him are a sea. They are endless, deep, and completely fluid.

Every time feels like drowning.

Riko swallows the water. It fills his lungs until he is dead weight and then he sinks, down, down, to the bottom of everything and nothing. His bare feet slide through sand as thick as blood and he traces an invisible path through the data. Echoes vibrate around him, muffled and warped by the water. The voices are indistinguishable unless he focuses.

There is a black pit before Riko. It is a sharp drop on the seafloor, the chasm pitch-black and obscured. Riko steps into it and lets himself fall. There are ragged things protruding from the walls around him; fractured shells and bones catch on Riko’s skin and tear little cuts that burn with the salt of the water around him. Here, the injuries don’t heal. They stay.

This is why, when Riko hits the bottom and faces a polished mirror of pearl and sea glass, he sees himself scarred and fractured. Riko walks toward the mirror and steps into it, eyes closing for a moment as he steps through.  _ Show me. _

The mirror shatters inward. Shards fly through the cuts and gaps in Riko, edges scratching enough to make him bleed but not enough to stick. Everything connects to Riko in a savage reminder of reality until he looks down and finds the water around him pink.

There are two holes that are not filled. One, Riko already knows. He ignores it and looks instead at the other, a warped and tiny shard near his left arm.  _ What did they take? _ He presses his fingers to the wound and breathes slowly, sinking, the sand at his feet swallowing his ankles while Riko concentrates.

The answer comes suddenly, terrifying. Riko sucks in air that doesn’t exist and sinks a little further before he stops himself. He kicks at the sand and struggles upward, panic scattering his thoughts and making it harder to emerge. Riko climbs out of the pit and cuts his hands on the shell and bone as he goes, uncaring of the damage and desperate to leave.

When Riko reaches the surface, seaweed sticks to his limbs. He yanks and thrashes his way up toward the bright blue-green surface of the sea, his body burning with the effort. This is the only time Riko ever feels the struggle of his human body. It is the only time he can feel the real terror of being human, the possibility of failing.

In the end, Riko emerges gasping. He coughs wetly while Seth says quiet things to him that don’t matter or make sense.  _ Liar.  _ When Riko finally has the breath for it he says, “I know. I know what they wanted.”

“Did they get it?”

“Yes. But I won’t let them.”

♅

Neil isn’t allowed to drive. Neither is Kevin. Somehow, through a miracle of silent convincing and the need to get away, Andrew allows Aaron to drive them back. When they reach the Foxhole, Andrew is the first one out of the car.

Wymack is strolling down the steps when they pull up. When he sees the blood on Aaron’s face and the cracking veins on Andrew’s neck and jaw, he walks faster. “What the fuck happened?”

“I’m sorry,” Nicky says. His voice breaks and the tears are back. Neil isn’t sure if they ever left. “I just—it’s—”

Andrew points at Nicky. The signal alone is enough to silence him. He doesn’t speak, though, and that is how Neil knows this is not going to end well. 

A woman walks out of the Foxhole behind Wymack, maybe alerted by Nicky’s voice; she stops short when she sees Andrew. “I’m calling—”

“Don’t,” Aaron says quickly. Maybe he sees something in Andrew that he recognizes. “We need to keep him here.”

“No. We do this now,” Wymack says.

Kevin makes a noise of protest. “Now? We are about to attack, make the biggest move we’ve ever planned, and—”

“Shut up. He’s going.”

“No. No, this isn’t—”

Neil isn’t sure what makes him open his mouth. He only knows that he is listening to everyone talk about Andrew and not about the people they left behind in a pretty white house. They are talking about Andrew and not the ugly things in the quiet neighborhood, the little torture, the piece-by-piece deconstruction of a human.

**“Stop,”** Neil says. He doesn’t consciously echo the words through his tek and the communication link they are connected to, but it happens. The words echo and suddenly everyone else pours out of the house, freezing and gasping in varied levels of horror.

Wymack crosses his arms. He sighs and takes a step towards Neil—

—but Neil skirts away, instinct and danger pressing at his neck like a knife. Wymack stops in his tracks.

“No one is going anywhere,” Neil says carefully. He can feel skin beneath his hands, necks fragile enough to crush.  _ It’s not there. You are here.  _ “We are going inside. I am going to look at Aaron, make sure he’s not hurt. Everyone is going to be quiet, and then we will talk.”

Wymack has the look of someone that knows he can argue but won’t for the sake of peace. Neil doesn’t care. He beckons Nicky inside and strides toward the medical room at the back of the house.

Andrew plants himself right outside the door. He is elsewhere and no one goes within five feet of him. Neil separates, categorizes, breaks himself apart and manages everything he knows he must do. He can’t handle Andrew right now and he doesn’t think anyone can, so he focuses on Aaron.

“Your arm,” Neil says. He doesn’t look at Aaron yet. He can’t really look into those eyes and see what he already knows.

_ You should have stopped it. You shouldn’t have hesitated. _

_ You shouldn’t have let this happen. _

Neil takes a tool from the table beside him and pops Aaron’s medic augmentation from the top of his left hand. He cleans the bio-tek in one swipe, the blood gone and tek decontaminated immediately. Neil hooks into the tek and runs his diagnostics, checking and triple-checking every inch of code and every hidden adjustment they’ve ever made. He locks and re-locks every back door, every secret path, and every redundancy. He adds mines and trip wires, and then he adds more.

When it is done, Neil snaps the augmentation back into its place and watches his fingertips glow a bluish color with the heat of the fast-paced tekno-magic work. He stares at them and wonders what they are worth.  _ Does it matter, if I can’t save the one person I want to protect? _

Aaron is staring at his own hands. There are still drops of blood on his right wrist. Neil goes to wet a washcloth at the sink and comes back to gently wipe away every offending drop that he finds. Neil imagines he can erase everything one drop at a time, cleansing the experience from Aaron and himself and everyone else.

Neil drops the washcloth into the trash and pushes it into a corner. When he turns back, Aaron is still frozen in place. Neil lowers himself into the chair across from Aaron, careful. “Hey. Come back.” Aaron doesn’t reply. Neil’s heart thuds in his ears and he swallows past the lump in his throat. “Don’t go.”

Aaron breathes in shakily. His hands shake too, when he pulls them into curled fists and tucks them against his chest. “I…”

“You did the right thing. You stayed alive,” Neil says. He wants to say more,  _ fuck that thing you killed, it wasn’t human,  _ but he can’t. Not now. Aaron needs something else. “You kept Andrew safe. You kept me safe.”

“I’m not—” Aaron shakes his head like he is dislodging something. “How...can I go back to work?”

_ I’m not supposed to hurt people,  _ he doesn’t say. Neil hears it anyway, feels it lodge in his chest like a silent arrow. It is another reminder that he did not do what he was supposed to. The only thing Neil has ever done, even when he was unmoving in a corner of Aaron’s apartment, was look after them, look after Aaron. Yet now, though Neil can stand and fight and run, he can’t do a thing to keep Aaron from the hell Neil has brought down upon them.

Neil lowers himself onto the ground, knees cool against the tiled floor. He covers Aaron’s hands with his own just to break the image they must present, a ghost of blood and panic that will take time for Aaron to let go of.

“One thing cannot change all of you,” Neil says. He knows how stupid everything he could say is and he wouldn’t say anything at all if it wasn’t Aaron. He has to try. “You are too much to change, Aaron.”

“That’s not—”

“You are too much,” Neil presses. “You are a healer and a helper. You fix tek and toasters but can’t make toast to save your life. You like grocery shopping but hate the people. Your dream date is probably a medical museum and burgers after.”

“That doesn’t change what I did, Neil.”

“Yeah, well, what you did doesn’t change everything else, either.” Neil can finally see Aaron’s eyes and it’s a relief. They aren’t empty or broken, just scarred. It isn’t going to be easy to come back from this, but nothing is easy to come back from. “This doesn’t make everything else a lie. I would know. I can see you. I see you.”

Aaron’s eyes shut. He doesn’t argue but Neil can hear every voice in Aaron’s head telling him  _ you are nothing more but a murderer.  _ All Neil wants to do is rip the little voice out and swallow it whole.

“I’ve seen the devil and his tools,” Neil says softly. He pulls Aaron’s hands up to his chest. “You are nothing like any of them.”

Aaron nods. When he opens his eyes, he looks a little more stable. It is probably just the adrenaline wearing down, but Neil lets it go. They can fight this later, alone, when they are somewhere safe and warm. “I have to look after Andrew.”

“Okay,” Neil says. He pulls his hands away from Aaron’s slowly, lingering as long as he can on their touch. When he finally lets go, he feels like he has lost something.

They both have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone i assume you are sufficiently injured


	10. threads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If I kill him, how much time would have left to get what we need?"

“There’s only one person who could fix it,” Wymack says.

“Wrong.” Riko takes the stairs two at a time. He adjusts his bodysuit sleeves, loops over his fingers snapping. If he were in a better mood, Aaron would probably make a face at the concept of Riko and Seth coming out of a room where they were undressed.

Wymack crosses his arms over his chest. He is transparent when it comes to distrust, but it’s always made things simple for Aaron. “You aren’t going anywhere near him.” Wymack turns away from Riko. “There’s only one person.”

“Do you get tired of sounding like a shitty movie?” Riko asks. His words always seem to have a crack to them, like he has a verbal whip and he is lashing out at everyone and everything. “I ask because I get tired of hearing you sound like a shitty movie.”

“Seth, will you shut him up.”

“Don’t want that,” Andrew says softly. “He’ll stick his dick in Riko’s mouth.”

Aaron stares at his brother. He’s been off since—

— _ well, no shit. Have you been the same? _

Aaron presses his fingers against his closed eyes until he sees spots.  _ Stop it. _

“Can everyone just shut up and listen?” Seth looks tired. He has smudges under his eyes. They look like what Aaron sees when he looks in the mirror.  _ Are we the same, all of us? Does it matter? _

Wymack holds his hands up, but he doesn’t look particularly peaceful or patient. Andrew just leans back in his chair and continues to dig his knife into the table beside him.  _ Healthy coping from healthy people. _

“Right before you all left on your ill-fated family reunion, I was hacked,” Riko says. He ignores the way Andrew looks at him when he says  _ family reunion.  _ Aaron can already see Riko plastered to the sidewalk after an ‘accidental’ fall.

“We weep for your pain,” Andrew replies darkly.

Riko doesn’t acknowledge the sarcasm. “There’s no reason they would have hacked me for information. They have what I have. It’s not information they wanted; at least, not the data kind.”

“Then what?” Neil interrupts. He sounds ragged around the edges. “Stop talking in circles.”

“They wanted to know where to hit so it would hurt,” Riko snaps. His hand flexes at his side like he wants to punch something. “They knew Andrew’s implant is so dated and specific that it would be nearly impossible to fix for just anyone.”

“I hope you’re going somewhere with this,” Wymack says, dry. “I don’t have patience left.”

“None of you do,” Riko mutters. “My point is, they want him to go to Proust. They’re planning on it.”

“How do you know? Because it’s what you would do?” Andrew asks quietly. He steps away from the table he is leaning against and Aaron has to close his eyes to forcibly shut out the memory of Andrew going up the staircase.  _ Don’t think about it. Don’t. _

Riko stares right back at Andrew. “Yes.”

Andrew deliberately steps up to Riko until they are toe to toe. He reaches out and curls his hand around Riko’s neck. Aaron opens his mouth but doesn’t know what to say.  _ Stop? Should he?  _ Seth isn’t even moving. He looks like he wants to, of course, but he stays in place and stares at the far wall like he’s trying to break it down with his mind.

“I think we should have killed you already.”

“Probably,” Riko says. He doesn’t sound like his throat is being crushed. “Choking won’t work. I don’t breathe like you do.”

“Nothing about you is human,” Andrew says quietly. Aaron can hear the creak of Riko’s tek reactively flexing against Andrew’s hand.

“When they get me back, they’ll take what they need and start again,” Riko says. “They’ll make another me. One that does exactly what they want, how they want. I will be theirs and I will be better for them. Maybe they’ll use even less human this time.”

“That’s not possible.”

Riko’s eyes slide toward Andrew. He looks like he expected this, all of it. “I know you don’t want me to do it. You won’t let me. But if you are going to him, you will need leverage heavier than what they have, and you can’t go alone.”

A hand slides onto Aaron’s wrist. He only realizes when Neil touches him that he is barely breathing. Neil’s voice echoes in his head, soft.  **_“Do you know?”_ **

Aaron wants to laugh. He swallows and it feels like a rock sliding down his throat.  **_Why would I? He’s only my brother._ **

**_“Proust. He does...he tortures people. Runs their memories again and again. He doesn’t just scrub implants. He is like sandpaper, and he scratches until it bleeds.”_ **

Aaron closes his eyes. He can hear all the spaces between Neil’s words, unspoken horror and disgust echoing through their connection. This is not just an undesirable thing; it is the worst thing. If Andrew goes to Proust, it will be the most Aaron has ever failed him. It will be the worst thing he has ever done.

Neil’s hand tightens on Aaron’s wrist just before he speaks. He thinks this is how he knows that Neil knows. Aaron steps closer to Andrew and says, “I can do it.”

Andrew doesn’t tear his eyes away from Riko. “No, you can’t.”

“I can.” Aaron feels Neil’s hand curl on his wrist. “If I know what he knows.”

“No.” Andrew drops Riko and turns to Aaron. “You are not going into—”

“You’re right. He’s not,” Riko interrupts. “I will.”

“That’s funny. One would think choking would demonstrate a lack of trust. Maybe I need to do it again.”

“Don’t trust me, fine. But I’ll get it out of him. If you’re that concerned, you can scrub the data before I pass it on. But you’ll have to work fast. You won’t last long if that virus spreads from your implant.”

“He’s right,” Kevin says. Aaron watches Andrew turn slowly to glare at Kevin, who doesn’t seem to notice. “We don’t have to get near Proust and Riko proves himself.”

“I’ll scrub it,” Neil says smoothly, like he doesn’t think his offer will be noticed. “Good practice for me and I’m the fastest anyway.”

“We can’t afford to—”

“We can’t afford to wait, or talk about it any more,” Neil counters. “We all know I’m the fastest. I’ll go with Riko, we’ll get what we need from Proust, and I’ll be able to send it to Aaron almost immediately.”

_ This is a bad idea.  _ Aaron knows it; he knows how terribly this could end. It will end. He knows how much they are all risking and he also knows that no one will back down. The headaches aren’t just headaches anymore and the longer they ignore the problem, the worse it will be for Andrew. If they don’t fix the virus Drake left, Andrew won’t be able to function properly. His corrupted implant will infect every other system in him and spread until it inevitably breaks everyone around it.

“If you and Riko go, you take Seth,” Wymack finally says.

Andrew laughs. “Right, send the one that’s fucking Riko. He’ll definitely be a neutral party.”

“Not that it matters,” Seth says quietly. “But you’re wrong. Neil?”

“Yeah.” Neil’s hand shifts to squeeze Aaron’s for a moment. “Let’s figure this out.”

Aaron doesn’t want to let go. He has to force his hand to uncurl and then he watches as Neil walks away, thinking only that it feels like they won’t see each other again for some time.  _ I hope to God I’m fucking wrong. _

♅

Aaron wakes up just as Neil expected, breathing ragged and fingers grasping at the sheets. Neil stays utterly still and waits—he knows better than to touch or interrupt, at least until Aaron is more present.

It hurts to watch and sit back. Some part of Neil wants to reach through their connection and take the memories, the images burned into Aaron’s mind. The things waking him in the night. It wouldn’t help, though; Neil knows it well. He knows better than most that deleting data doesn’t erase it. There is always a scar left behind, evidence that something was there and isn’t anymore.

“Aaron,” Neil whispers. Enough time has passed and he can’t watch much longer.

Aaron is trying to slow his breathing. His eyes are squeezed shut and he tilts his chin up like he is trying to stop himself from vomiting. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Neil slides his hand onto Aaron’s back. “You’re doing good. Keep breathing.”

_ I could kid myself into thinking I know how to help. _ It’s not like Neil has ever successfully countered his own nightmares or the panic that grips him in the darkness, horrors flashing behind his closed eyelids in defiance of his attempts to hide.

It doesn’t matter. Aaron relaxes into Neil’s touch and breathes slowly, in and out, until Neil realizes Aaron is trying to match Neil’s heartbeat. His hand is on Neil’s wrist, fingers against his pulse. Neil swallows and wonders  _ how did I become a comfort to anyone? To him? _

“I didn’t…” Aaron shakes his head distractedly. He swallows past another wave and says, “I didn’t think I would…”

Neil clenches his jaw. He works to get it open again so that he can say, “It doesn’t matter. When you’re a good person, it doesn’t matter if they were a bad person. It feels terrible anyway.”

“Why?” Aaron laughs brokenly. It makes Neil want to dig Drake up and kill him again. “He was...Andrew…”

“You’re a good person,” Neil repeats, trying to keep his voice from shaking too much. “You save people every day. You do all you can to save them. And this wasn’t that. This was…”

“Wrong.”

“No. It wasn’t wrong. You did—”

“What I had to?” Aaron laughs darkly. “I could have stunned him. Anything—”

“Anything else and he would’ve come back,” Neil says sharply. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t believe it.”

Aaron doesn’t look up. His fingers rub the inside of Neil’s wrist like a rabbit’s foot.  _ As if I could ever be lucky.  _ “Why? Why did I…”

“You never should have had to do it,” Neil says quietly.  _ I should have done it.  _

“None of us should have,” Aaron says firmly, as if he can hear what Neil doesn’t say. He always does. Sometimes Neil checks their connection just to make sure nothing is leaking between them.

“Then who? God?”

“He should get off his ass,” Aaron mutters.

“Careful. He might set the bed on fire.”

“Yeah, that’d be great. Andrew would be so pleased to know you’re sleeping with me.”

Neil grins. “I’ll give you a ring. Make it formal. I’ll even ask for Wymack’s permission.”

Aaron rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t look as drawn. The weariness in his face is smoothed just a little. For now, at least, the nightmare has passed.  _ And how long will that last? _

_ I don’t want to leave. _ It’s an unhelpful thought but it’s the same one that’s been running through Neil’s head every day since they came to the Foxhole. Before, it was easy to not think about the end. It was easy for Neil to live mostly in the dark, mostly unmoving, like all his life was a held breath. Neil didn’t have to think about the eventuality of death because it was far away and they had time.

Now, Neil is awake and upright every day. Now, he spends his time fighting bots and running through Kevin’s trials, practicing for a hack that he may never be able to perform.  _ And so what? Does it even matter anymore? _

“I’m sorry,” Aaron says quietly.

“What?”

“Someone else should have found you,” Aaron says. He closes his eyes as if that makes it easier for him to lean into Neil and forget everything else.  _ I hope it does. _ “Someone not…”

“You?” Neil shifts and pulls Aaron closer to the pillows behind them. “Bullshit.”

“You wouldn’t be—”

“I’d be in trouble anywhere,” Neil says, hoping he sounds joking enough to throw Aaron off.

“It’s not funny.”

“I know.”

“If you weren’t with me, you’d be on your feet and someone with more money could—”

“Money?” Neil snorts. “No. No, it wouldn’t help—and I found you. Not the other way around.”

Aaron turns to look at Neil. He seems even more exhausted than Neil remembers.  _ I have to go,  _ Neil thinks. It’s the first time he’s believed it.  _ I can’t do this to him.  _ “You? You were in pieces.”

“I know,” Neil whispers. “Even then. I found you. I was looking for you. I needed someone to put me together, and you were the only one. You’re the only one, Aaron.”

Aaron laughs. It sounds like he’s been crying, or he might cry. “I don’t know how you get away with saying that with a straight face.”

“It’s the only thing about me that is.”

Neil exhales slowly.  _ I have to go, even if I hate it. Even if he hates me for it.  _ The longer Neil stays at the Foxhole, the worse things will become. He’s running on fumes and the more time that passes, the worse the punishment will be. If going with Riko is the only thing that saves Andrew, Neil has to do it.  _ Aaron won’t make it without him. Not when I’m gone. _

“You have training tomorrow,” Aaron says. “You should sleep.”

“I’ll be here.” Neil reaches for the sheets bunched at their ankles and pulls them up. “Until you fall asleep, and after. Sleep.”

Neil stays. He stays and watches Aaron drift, and he wonders if he’ll remember this when he is being taken apart.  _ Do my memories and dreams have anywhere to go? Or will they be taken apart, too? _

If there is any part of him that remains, Neil hopes that it will be this, just a quiet moment where the world is asleep and he is holding the one person he cares about in the world. If Neil can hold onto this until the end, he thinks maybe dying won’t be so bad.

♅

Kevin has Neil training until the moment he leaves. Neil left Aaron asleep in bed and silenced the room, hoping that it would give Aaron the rest he needed. They won’t say goodbye, but maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s better if Aaron remembers Neil at his side while he fell asleep, dreamless and at peace.

“Not good enough,” Kevin says raggedly. He has sweat beaded on his forehead, cheeks red and augmentations whirring. Neil can hear them even if a normal human couldn’t. “Again.”

“There’s no time,” Neil snaps. He’s tired. All day, there’s been nothing but drills and endless code. Neil has hacked Kevin’s constructs more times than he’s even looked at Aaron’s code. He feels like the world is nothing but numbers and he wants to scream.

Kevin pushes his hair away from his face. He isn’t even looking at Neil anymore. “This will never work. You’re not fast enough. You can’t—”

“Shut up,” Neil warns.  _ Am I really going to fucking leave with this as the last thing that happened? _

Kevin ignores him. “You can’t do it. All this time and everything I have—it’s not going to work; I don’t know why—”

Neil darts forward. He doesn’t make a conscious decision to act until he is acting, jumping at Kevin too fast for Kevin to react. Neil latches on and tenses until Kevin hits the floor, eyes widening with shock. Neil sits on Kevin’s chest and looks down at him, unimpressed.  _ All this drama.  _ Kevin looks like he’s not sure if he’s supposed to be fighting.

“That’s your problem,” Neil says, prodding Kevin’s chest with a finger. It’s firmer than he expected. “Lack of dedication.”

Kevin looks at Neil like he’s grown a third head. “What did you just—”

“You’re half-assing it,” Neil interrupts, louder. He pokes at Kevin’s chest again.  _ Does he have augmentations or something?  _ “I know you’re a wonder boy and all, prodigy at everything you touch, but that’s no excuse.”

“I am not half-assing anything,” Kevin says darkly. It looks like he may consider shoving Neil off.

“Yeah, you are,” Neil replies, rolling his eyes. “You’re half-assing this ‘take down the Moriyama’ plan. You’re not really interested in it.”

Kevin does shove Neil off. He rolls away and starts to get to his feet; Neil lunges at Kevin and knocks him sideways. Neil sits on Kevin’s back and says, “Really. You’re half-assing it. I’m not sure if you purposefully can’t commit or if there’s just a tiny bit of you that wants to go home. Beg for forgiveness, take the punishment, go back to being an expensive pet.”

Kevin growls wordlessly and pushes himself up. Neil swings his legs over Kevin’s shoulders and holds on. He’s pleasantly surprised when Kevin slams them into a wall, a ripple of kinetic energy making Neil’s back tense up. His tek absorbs and redistributes the force, channeling it to where his legs are locked around Kevin’s neck.

“You should think about it,” Neil says conversationally. “How much you’re willing to lose, I mean. How far you’re willing to go.”

“You think I haven’t?” Kevin grunts. He pulls at Neil’s legs, wide hands pressed against skin. “I know how dangerous they are. I know they—”

“God, you’re dumb.” Neil leans back and manages to grasp a rail affixed to the wall. He pulls until Kevin tips, then flips over to straddle him. “Do you hear yourself when you talk? You talk a lot. You must.”

“Shut up,” Kevin hisses.

“No, listen. Everything you just said is about them. We’re talking about you. What are you willing to give up?”

Kevin isn’t struggling as much. Neil waits, anticipating.  _ Am I actually hoping he’ll answer me? Am I hoping he has a good answer?  _ Neil almost want to laugh.  _ I was so angry I’d be leaving him behind with Aaron. Andrew. _

_ When did I start to root for him? _

The door slams open next to Neil’s head. He looks up and squints, the hallway light bright in his eyes. It doesn’t hide that Andrew is standing there, haloed and terrible, his burning gaze heavy on Neil.

“What are you doing.”

“Is that a question, officer?”

Andrew’s fingers twitch like he’s about to reach for Neil’s legs. Neil sighs loudly and releases Kevin, rolling backwards until he is standing. Kevin coughs into his elbow and pushes himself off the floor. He shoots a dirty look at Neil but it seems halfhearted.  _ He better be thinking about it now. I’m not dying for nothing. _

“It’s time to go,” Andrew says.

Neil takes a moment to look at Andrew, just look, and think. He’s not sure how to feel about what he sees. Andrew isn’t grinning like a yellow crescent moon. His fingers aren’t drumming against his arms like he’s just waiting to take out his knife and stab someone. He looks still. Still, like rigor mortis. It leaves a bad taste in Neil’s mouth. He’s not sure how to fix it.  _ There’s no time left. _

Seth appears in the doorway behind Andrew. “Hey. You ready?”

_ No.  _ “Yes,” Neil says. He reaches for his black socks and unrolls them, wondering if it even matters whether he wears them.  _ I’ll be dead soon.  _ “I’m ready.”

♅

Riko told Seth he didn’t want to wear his bodysuit.  _ If it’s the thing I’m buried in, I won’t let it be theirs. _ Seth had thrown clothes at Riko without looking and said,  _ you won’t be buried. _

He’s right about that. The Master will take Riko apart and the scraps will be recycled into something better. There will be nothing to bury.

Riko watches Neil walk up to Seth’s truck. He looks a lot like Riko remembers, though the memory is fuzzy and distorted.  _ I think we fought.  _ He imagines the Master probably made them spar as a joke, likely after Riko had one of his first surgeries. Neil would never have stood a chance. He was only human, then.

_ Don’t tell them. _ Riko leans his head against the glass. It’s obvious; he’s stunned that no one has noticed yet. Neil isn’t a robot. He is painfully human. The only thing unnatural about Neil is what was done to him.  _ Isn’t that all of us? _ Neil has the scars of someone forcefully augmented. Riko would know.

Seth taps the window as he passes Riko.  _ He’s a fool, too. Should have left me to die. _ There’s no point in thinking about it now, but Riko still feels the bitterness of a wish in his mouth. To be given something only to be robbed of it. It’s so cliche it’s not even funny.

Neil slides into the backseat. “You aren’t helping when you wear his clothes.”

“The pants aren’t his. They’re Aaron’s.”

Riko relishes Neil’s silence for the few seconds that it lasts. He almost rolls his eyes out of their sockets when Neil says, “What.”

“Maybe you should talk to him,” Riko says conversationally.  _ Don’t do it. Don’t.  _ “It’s not typical to keep someone’s pants with you, you know?”

The driver’s side door wings open and Seth tosses a backpack into the back seat. “You killed each other yet?”

“I am irritable, not stupid,” Riko says, dry.

Seth snorts as he shuts the door. He pulls his seat belt into place and flicks through the crackling screen of his truck’s console. The car is old, but it bears the marks of care. Seth cares for it. The interior is obviously clean and well-maintained, despite the dated aspects of the tek. Riko almost can’t reconcile Seth punching him with Seth carefully using the same hands to detail his truck.  _ But I did deserve the punch, I guess. _

They’re only about ten minutes away from the Foxhole when Neil says, “You know you’re not making it out.”

_ Either,  _ he doesn’t say.  _ You’re not making it out, either.  _ Riko wants to say it just out of spite. He keeps his tongue in check for one minute before he says, “Do I?”

Seth’s hands tighten on the wheel. It’s almost imperceptible but Riko can hear the creak, attuned to every noise around him. Neil stretches, legs swinging up as he lies across the backseat. “You know what happens when you hack Proust. As soon as you take what you need, NEST will know.”

“If they did, you wouldn’t be able to stop me.” Riko turns halfway in his seat, smiling without joy. “Why did you come if you knew that? If you did, you’d know there’s no way to survive. You’d know you wouldn’t be helping Andrew.”

Neil’s blue eyes are half-lidded.  _ Is he fucking going to sleep?  _ “You know you are going to die, but you’re going anyway.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Don’t you?” Neil’s eyes flash a little. Maybe he is writing a eulogy.  _ One where he compares me to a bird. Roadkill.  _ “You could have let Andrew go. Take his chances. There’s no reason for you to want to do this.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to,” Riko repeats. His voice feels harsh in his throat, like swallowing needles.

“Then don’t.”

“How many times do I have to—”

“Obviously more, because I don’t get it,” Neil interrupts, agitated. He is half-upright, eyes open a little more.  _ Good.  _ “Explain. You tortured Kevin. You did NEST’s dirty work for years. Why, all of a sudden, do I have to forgive you and cry when you die? Because you did this one thing?”

“You won’t cry. Don’t make me laugh.” Riko scoffs, hands tightening on his arms. He can feel the tek beneath his skin flexing and hardening against the stress. “No one fucking will. I wouldn’t ask them to.”

“Sure.”

“Hate me all you fucking want,” Riko snaps.  _ What else has ever happened?  _ He feels like three people in one—the robot the Master wants, the Moriyama that was second to his brother, the Riko that ran away and went to the people that should never have let him in. “I know I won’t have redemption. I know I don’t deserve it. You do what you want, but I am doing this.”

“And what is this?” Neil asks softly. “The goodness of your heart? A last-minute sacrifice?”

“This is fertilizer,” Riko says. He laughs and it’s not funny, but he keep laughing. “I’m fucking fertilizer,  _ Neil.  _ I die and your Andrew lives, untouched, for you to worry about for however long you can. What I was or am won’t matter. I’m just dirt.”

_ If I could even decompose.  _ Riko wants to slam his head against the dashboard. He wants to be in the blackness, permanently, but he is so terrified of it that he can’t help pulling at everything around him to stop it from closing in. It’s like he’s falling into his grave and clawing dirt on top of him as he goes.  _ How do you hate living but fear dying? _

“I think that’s enough,” Seth says quietly.

“I don’t think it is.”

Seth holds a hand up between them, a silent signal that Riko has seen a few times already. He wonders where Seth got it from, or why.  _ He used to hit things with his hands, and maybe someone told him to find another outlet. _

Neil’s eyes are closed again. He crosses his legs, rearranging his half-broken body. “They know we’re coming. That’s why they haven’t moved him somewhere else. Somewhere under their umbrella.”

Riko laughs. “The world is under their umbrella.”

♅

The closer he gets, the more unreal it feels. The contradiction isn’t lost on Neil. He wonders if it is a defense mechanism of his human side, coiled away in a dark corner of his broken and rebuilt body.

He thinks he is going to miss Aaron.

The place Seth pulls up to is a hulking mass of buildings sprawled across an incongruous stretch of green land. The trees that surround the place have arms twisted together, as if even they are contorted in some kind of unspeakable agony. If Neil only looks through his periphery, it could be any hospital. When he looks directly at the archway above the front doors, it looks like the nightmare that it is.

“Are we really going through the front door?” Seth murmurs. He hasn’t completely turned the car off yet.

Riko pushes his door open and slips to the ground. Seth mutters  _ guess so  _ to himself. Neil presses his hands onto the seat beneath him. He tries to memorize everything about Seth’s truck, from the faint smell of spearmint gum to the lingering odor of some cheap air freshener. Polished door handles, worn carpeting. Neil shuts his eyes and takes one moment to build a construct in his mind, every detail carved with precision. A getaway car.

There is a rap on his window. Seth’s expression is grim, knuckles retreating. “It’s time.”

Neil waits for Seth to step away before he swings his door open. He closes it quietly— _ don’t make a sound, you aren’t real _ —and falls into step just behind Seth and Riko. They can’t protect him if something happens; it isn’t fear that makes Neil take his place. He stands there because it is a little like walking to his execution between the two guards that must bear witness.

The steps to the place are wide and sharp like teeth waiting for someone to fall into them. The doors seem heavy, with gilded handles and frames. It looks like the building is an imitation of something old, but Neil knows it is new. Every inch of this place is connected to NEST, from its systems to the walls themselves. They are walking into a stomach.

When Neil steps in, he feels like he has been hacked. Every muscle in his body tenses and he has one hand on Seth’s car in his mind, augmentations whirring as he runs a dozen programs at once. It’s not a hack. Still, reality is disconnected in the too-white space. It looks like the walls and floors don’t exist, like even the woman behind the desk is a flat program with hungry eyes like cameras. Seth glances around as if he, too, feels the unsteadiness.

“This way,” Riko says. He points sharply and Neil notices he looks like part of the scenery. Like the woman, like every orderly they pass, Riko seems like a part of this place. More than that, he looks like the canine in a wolf’s grinning maw. He looks like he belongs here and he looks like he is the most dangerous part.

The hallways narrow as they walk. Neil is conscious of what it means. It is a physical manifestation of the increasing web in the walls around them, NEST tek crackling with potential as it begins to reach out at the visitors. Right now, it is a cloud of mosquitoes pricking at Neil. There is nothing dangerous happening yet and Neil can easily deflect the tiny, sharp probes, but he is aware of the presence.

Riko slows when they reach a room labeled with a three. It doesn’t look like an office. The sensation of something wet on his feet tells Neil to look down.  _ Don’t. I don’t want to.  _ He looks and finds cool, still water seeping out from under the door.

“Don’t listen to anything he says,” Riko says quietly.

Neil swallows. “Why? Are they lies?”

“They are truth. And they’ll hurt.”

Riko pushes the door open. The room is lit; there is no dramatic lingering in the shadows. Most of the room looks like the rest of the place, white walls and floors, white surfaces, sharp lines. There is an examination table at one end of the room but it has straps. There is a ring light on the ceiling.

The real point of interest is a porcelain tub at the center of the room. There is water inside and around the lip and as Neil watches, a drop of water falls into an already-thin puddle on the floor with a resounding  _ drip. _

A man at the counter Neil did not notice before turns.  _ Was he here before?  _ Neil tenses, prepared, as the man walks toward them. He mostly looks nondescript, graying hair and glasses and a moustache. You could forget what he looks like.  _ Unless you can’t. _

“You’re here.”

Riko strides up to the man as if he is unconcerned with the potential consequences.  _ Maybe there are none for him,  _ Neil thinks, the little voice in his head whispering poisonously.  _ There never were.  _ Riko snaps and beckons Proust to his level. “You are going to give me what I want.”

“Of course.” This is said slowly, tranquil, as if this meeting was arranged. “I’m afraid there aren’t seats in here. We—”

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Seth interrupts. His voice snaps like brittle firewood.He jerks his head toward the other end of the room. “On the table. Now.”

Proust doesn’t move yet. He doesn’t seem to register that Seth has spoken. “You have a roundabout way of doing your duty, Riko.”

“Shut up.”

“Curious. You were always a fast learner.”

Riko’s hand darts forward. Neil can see what is coming—Proust on the floor, throat crushed, Riko screaming wordlessly as he unravels—but he does not have the chance to act. Riko stops himself, hand wavering in the air. His hand curls into a fist, only one finger extended to point between Proust’s eyes. “Table,” he says quietly, almost a whisper. “Now.”

Proust looks like he might say more, but he just nods once as if he has found what he was looking for. He walks toward the table and clasps his hands behind him like a father indulging a child having a temper tantrum. It makes Neil’s skin crawl.  _ He’s done things. You can see them. _

“Sit,” Riko says. Proust gives him a long, patient stare. Riko’s face is a blank slate, no emotion or twitch in his features. He has shut himself away. “Sit. Now.”

Proust sits. Riko beckons blindly to Seth, who turns to Neil and extends a hand. “Wherever you want it.”

Neil wants to say  _ no.  _ He wants to run away and not look back. He wants to take Proust and drown him in the bathtub. Instead he slides his hands to the back of his neck and presses. He can feel an implant give way, flexible tek stiffening into a hard square when it leaves his skin. He plucks it from himself and passes it to Seth. The weight of it feels like too much in his hand.

“We won’t have much time,” Riko says. Again, no inflection. Nothing. Neil would worry that he was hacked if he wasn’t already constantly running checks. “Once I finish, we need to run.”

Neil swallows. He thinks he can feel his heart pounding now.  _ Is Aaron still asleep? I hope he is. _

Riko presses his fingers to his forehead. A bluish-purple light flickers softly and then Riko curves his fingers, clawlike, and reaches toward Proust. He looks like he wants nothing more than to crack the man’s neck, or maybe turn away and not touch him at all. Instead, Riko sinks his fingers into Proust’s implant and begins.

Neil doesn’t know what to do while Riko’s dark eyes stare flatly toward a corner of the room. He feels itchy with anticipation, something unnerving bubbling up from within. He feels like something is wrong.

“How long is it supposed to take?” Seth asks.

“Not long,” Proust says. He sounds academically interested in the question.

Seth jerks around to stare at Proust. “I thought—”

“He’s human,” Neil says unsteadily. “Fully. The implant hack won’t really affect him, other than his physical movement.”

“Great,” Seth mutters. “Other than his mouth, you mean.”

Proust is still looking straight ahead. Neil imagines it must be taking a lot of effort for Proust to speak. Or maybe he is just strong enough that his speaking isn’t affected. Whatever the truth, it’s unnerving to see the man gaze into the distance while he talks to them.

“You would benefit from being admitted,” Proust says.

Seth glances at Neil. Proust adds, “Not him. You. The tall one. I am speaking to you.”

“Yeah, well, I am not listening to you,” Seth retorts, mimicking Proust’s speech.

Neil thinks he sees a twitch. A smile that can’t make it to the surface. His skin crawls and he steps away from Proust, a little distance that he needs.

“You have a lot of anger,” Proust says delicately. “You think you can control it.”

“God, here we go,” Seth mutters. “Save it. I’ve heard it all.”

“You have hurt quite a lot of people, haven’t you, Seth?”

Seth stares at the side of Proust’s face. “Hey, Neil? If I kill him, how much time would we have left to get what we need? Before he’s brain dead?”

“Not enough,” Neil says distractedly. The tub is still dripping.  _ Has it been like that the whole time? _

The lights overhead flicker. Neil feels a sharp stab at his implant; he clenches his jaw and imagines he is in Aaron’s apartment. Their apartment. He pulls the metal shutters down over the shop and waits for the pain to subside.

There are dark, blue-gray veins spidering out from Riko’s eyes. Seth pointedly walks around Proust and looks at Riko, brows drawn together. “What’s happening?”

“He’s using a lot of power,” Neil says shortly. His head is beginning to ache. “He’s fighting off NEST and Proust at once. I’m keeping tabs on security.”

“You are not patients,” Proust says.  _ Yet  _ hangs in the air. “There is no reason for security to come for you.”

“Shut up,” Seth says, a little more on edge than before. “Neil, you sure you don’t—”

“Yes.”

The dripping sounds louder. Neil shakes his head. His feet are inching toward the tub despite a warning at the back of his mind.  _ Don’t do it. You know you shouldn’t. _

“How much longer?” Seth asks, short.

Proust hums. It sounds like a laugh. “Not long. Nathaniel knows. Don’t you, Nathaniel?”

“That’s not my name,” Neil says. He sounds distant to himself, like he isn’t really there.  _ Something is wrong.  _ He thinks about the truck but it doesn’t seem real, either. He can’t remember the metal of the door handle

_ What’s in the tub? _

“Neil,” Seth says. “Neil. Come on.”

Neil isn’t paying attention. He can hear the dripping like a shuddering roll of thunder every time it hits. The lights in the room change, suddenly, red flooding everything. Neil hears Seth curse and rush to the door to lock it. “Fuck. Neil, we have to go.”

“It’s not done,” Neil says. He doesn’t mean to say it, doesn’t think the words, but they come out. He is still looking at the tub as he walks toward it. He isn’t walking, either. He doesn’t want to walk to the tub but he is walking, is making his way closer.

_ Don’t look. Don’t do it. _

Neil stands at the edge of the tub, eyes fixed on the far wall, and kneels. He waits until his knees press against the tile.

“Neil, come on,” Seth is yelling.

Neil looks down.

Aaron is staring up at him. Aaron looks up at Neil, terrible and pale but blood-red in the light. His eyes are clouded and his lips are parted and Neil thinks  _ he can’t do that, he’s going to swallow water _ , and at the same time he thinks  _ he’s dead _ . Neil thinks he shouts Aaron’s name but he isn’t sure. He plunges his hands into the water.

It’s not a tub. It is an ocean. Neil falls in and swallows water; he thinks he might sink but it doesn’t matter. Aaron is there. He reaches and touches and thinks  _ no, this can’t happen.  _ He can see the skin mottled by Aaron’s cheek, around his forehead, right where Neil kissed him good night.

_ Something’s wrong. _

Neil feels it hit. He is inhaling copper, blood, water, and then he snarls through gritted teeth.  _ I know what Aaron feels like. I know every inch of him. This is not him. _ His hands curl into the corpse before him and then they curl into it, wisps of gauze and cotton disintegrating in his hands like the dessicated image of Aaron’s face.

Neil comes up gasping. He is sitting in the tub and the water splashes out, over the edge. He blinks and sees Proust crumpled at the foot of the wall across from him. Seth’s hand is tangled in Neil’s hair.

“Neil! Now!” Seth barks.

Neil doesn’t have time to think. He coughs water from his lungs and scrambles out of the tub, feet slipping on the slick floor. He blindly grabs something white and scrubs the back of his neck, water wicked away by netted bandages. Seth shoves something into Neil’s hand.  _ The implant. _ Neil slams the implant into his neck and shuts his eyes.

Aaron is alarmed. Neil can feel it echo in the connection and knows it is because Neil’s thread is vibrating, shaken, confused. Neil shoves everything away and sends what he needs to Aaron, emptying the contents of the implant and scrubbing them as he does. He bleaches everything, uncaring of what splashes on him as he works.

It only lasts a second. Neil shuts the connection down as soon as he is done. He finds Seth standing over Riko, a small, dark figure on the floor.

“Did you shut him down?”

Seth stares as if he doesn’t believe that Riko can be there, on the ground. “No.”

“Did he—”

“I think they killed him.”

The room seems suspended. The dripping is gone, Neil realizes. “No. It’s too soon.”  _ It can’t be true. It’s not right. They need him to break me.  _ “Seth—”

The walls hum. A sudden, sharp light starts to bleed down from the ceiling, following invisible veins of tek. Neil throws himself at the door and rams it open. Seth makes a noise of shock. Neil looks down the hallway and finds it empty, for now.

“Neil, we can’t—”

“You have to leave,” Neil says sharply. He digs his fingers into his neck and removes the implant again. It feels like a rough, bloody extraction. “Go. I have one more place to look, and I can hide better on my own. They’ll follow you. Go.”

“You’re not seriously—”

“I mean it,” Neil hisses. He shoves the implant at Seth. “He’s dead. There’s nothing else for you here. Go.”

Seth’s eyes narrow. “What do you fucking expect—”

“I’ll tell Aaron.” Neil taps his implant, behind the ear. He watches Seth stare like he knows— _ but how could he know I have to die? _ —and then Seth takes off down the hall, heavy boots pounding against the floor.

Neil looks back at the room with Riko and Proust. He kneels by Riko, turning him onto his back. The glowing blue spot on his forehead is singed. There is no light anymore. Neil swallows past a rock in his throat and opens his connection to Aaron.

**_“Neil? What the fuck. What the fuck—”_ **

**_Have to make a new connection. Something happened. No virus, just want to be safe._ **

**_“What happened? Is everyone okay?”_ **

**_Yeah._ ** _ Liar.  _ Neil squeezes his eyes shut harder. He can hear distant footsteps.  **_Seth’s on his way back. Riko’s...done, I think. I’m going to our apartment to rewire._ **

**_“What?”_ ** Aaron’s irritation vibrates down the connection, toward Neil. There is confusion and worry, too.  **_“No. Look, it’s safest for you to come back—”_ **

**_No. I’m going back, I need what’s at home. They won’t catch me and besides, they’ll be distracted with Seth and Riko._ **

**_“I don’t like it.”_ **

**_I know._ ** Neil hesitates, words on his tongue that he wants to speak to someone that isn’t there.  _ You had your goodbyes. Go.  _ **_I’ll see you soon._ **

**_“Stay safe. Come back.”_ **

Neil can’t answer. He breaks the connection and then watches the threads burn, racing up toward his hands with flickering orange light. He holds it until he feels its heat penetrating his skin and then he lets go. It feels like a loss torn into his chest, a gaping chasm that echoes hollowly while he stands there at the edge of himself.

A heavy hand lands on Neil’s shoulder. He does not have to look to know whose it is, but when he turns, he sees a familiar hand with a heavy ring. Neil shifts away from the hand and rises to his feet.

“Welcome back,” Tetsuji says. “Nathaniel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so how does everyone think the adventure's going


	11. remake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> However long it takes will never be quick enough.

Aaron was uneasy. It was a lingering, bitter unrest that hung in the corners of his mind and threatened to overcome him. He kept replaying Neil’s words in his head as if that would make it easier.  _ I’ll see you soon. _

Seth was on the balcony. He had a string of licorice in his mouth, a red, twisted rope that reminded Aaron of his lost connection. It didn’t feel right to have nothing but emptiness when there should have been Neil. Aaron hadn’t realized just how present Neil was in his mind until the link was gone, replaced by an echoing nothing.

_ He’s in mourning.  _ Aaron was aware of the change when Seth had returned, implant in hand, something missing from his usual tone. He didn’t speak the way he had before. It reminded Aaron of  _ before _ —before Neil, before leaving the Foxhole, before near-death. Seth had changed then, too.  _ But it wasn’t like this.  _ It wasn’t cigarettes to licorice.

“It’s a temporary fix,” Aaron says. He lowers himself next to Seth, who doesn’t really look up but silently offers the package of candy at his thigh. “No.”

Seth bites off the licorice in his mouth. He pulls away the remaining rope and unwinds it, scarred hands carefully picking at the malleable substance. “Then what next? How long does he have?”

_ Who? Neil, or Andrew? _ Aaron reaches for the licorice despite himself. Being at the Foxhole doesn’t feel right, even if it does feel familiar. He has a place. A life. He is used to the projects at the store below his apartment, where his hands are kept busy and Neil works in practiced silence next to him.

“Andrew will stretch it out as long as he thinks he needs to.”

“I didn’t ask about him. How long?”

“Three weeks, maybe.” Aaron bites the end of the licorice. It tastes bitter and plasticky to him. He doesn’t know why Seth likes it, or how anyone could. He focuses instead on pulling the rope apart to braid it again, careful not to break the threads. “It’s not really a matter of need. It’s just that if I bring him off it completely, his body won’t be able to handle it. We’ll be another person down.”

_Another three._ Seth doesn’t point it out but Aaron can feel it in the air. One of the licorice threads breaks halfway and he pinches it with his fingers, like stopping the bleeding, an artery beneath his hands. He once had to stop someone from dying from a femoral injury. _Major trauma._ _Always around major trauma._

“We’d need the parts.” Seth finishes his licorice. There’s a reddish cast to the inside of his lips, like he’s eaten an entire pack already. “They won’t be easy to find.”

“He won’t let it happen.” 

“I’m not one of his. He won’t care.”

“We won’t let it happen.”

Seth pauses in the middle of knotting a new rope of licorice. He pins Aaron with a silent, evaluating stare. “It won’t make a difference.”

_ If you try to stop me.  _ Aaron wishes Seth would stop not saying things. “I know you’re depressed, but trying to die like your robot friend isn’t going to help.”

“He wasn’t a robot,” Seth says softly. Dangerous.  _ He is going to say something you do not want to hear.  _ “Your Neil wasn’t, either.”

Aaron’s neck burns. He turns to look at Seth too fast and presses a hand against his neck, fighting a wince. “What did you just say?”

“You knew he could feel.”

“I always knew he could feel. I just didn’t think it would take if I tried to give everyone a lesson about artificial intelligence and sentience.”

Seth pauses, licorice resting against his lips. He looks uncertain for the first time since his return, as if he doesn’t know whether he should say something. Before or after, it’s not like Seth. Aaron stares back at Seth and wills him to speak.  _ Tell me what you don’t want to say. _ It’s too late, though; Aaron can see Seth retreating from the truth, whatever it is, his legs pulled up from where they are dangling to fold before him.

“I want to go home,” Aaron says. He doesn’t mean to let it out but it slips anyway. He drops the licorice in his hand and leans forward to press his forehead against the banister. “I just...I want to find Neil and go home.”

Seth must shift; the wood creaks enough for Aaron to hear despite his closed eyes. “He told you where he was going, didn’t he?”

“Home.”

“Then why did you say find?”

Aaron doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t but he knows he has to. He whispers, “I don’t believe him.”

“Do you believe he’ll come back?”

“He said he would.”

“But do you believe it?”

“Yes.”

Seth sighs. He is moving around, preparing to leave. Part of Aaron wants to catch his hand and tug him back down.  _ I can’t be alone in this.  _ “If you believe it, all you can do is make sure he comes back to something worthwhile.”

“You’re saying I’m worthless?” Aaron smiles wryly. He pulls away from the banister and finds Seth gathering his licorice.

“Like this? Yes.”  _ There’s that honesty. We called him an asshole before. He was.  _ Seth shoves his licorice into his endless back pocket, one of many on his police-issued cargo pants. Aaron wonders if he even has a job anymore.  _ Do any of us?  _ “I think Neil would tell you it’s his job to be melancholy and tragic.”

Aaron snorts. “Probably.”

“Don’t do his job for him,” Seth says lightly. It feels like it means more, though Aaron isn’t sure what more means. “He’ll be back. Until then, you should probably figure out where we’re going to steal parts from.”

Aaron hums wordlessly in agreement. Seth slides the balcony door open and leaves, heavy boots making the wood underfoot creak. Aaron still wants to ask him to stay but he doesn’t, lips shut tightly and thoughts whirring too fast to pinpoint any one.

_ Hurry up and come home,  _ he thinks. He picks up his twisted licorice and shoves it into his mouth, chewing through the rubbery mess.  _ I can’t really do this without you. _

♅

“Kneel.”

“That’s my name.”

Tetsuji isn’t amused. One of his fingers lifts slightly and a foot slams into Neil’s gut, twisting him onto his side in a breathless coil of pain. He blinks stars from his eyes and the room swims around him, blood-red and too-white all at once.

“Stand him up,” Tetsuji says. He sounds almost bored, but he doesn’t really have emotions so Neil doesn’t think he could be.

A steely hand pulls Neil upright. It’s small, like most of Riko, but not weak. Especially not now that he is just a shell, a puppet with bluish-purple orbs for eyes and cracked tek fissures on his face.

Neil isn’t sure if they scooped out Riko’s brain and replaced it with a computer, or if they are pumping energy into what should be a corpse.

Tetsuji comes down from his throne to look at Neil. The room is still wavy, like seeing things from underwater in a pool. Everything shifts left to right in soft ripples. It started to do that after the third surgery.

“I do not know how long you think you can keep this up,” Tetsuji says.

Neil feels a useless giggle burble from within his chest. “I was about to ask you that.”

Tetsuji slaps him. It’s a petty move and one that reminds Neil that emotion or not, Tetsuji is a second-rate Moriyama. He, like Riko, is an echo—only he is worse. Tetsuji is just human. He is heavily augmented, but human. He is a natural failure. He is an unnecessary child and he knows it. The self-hate is probably why Riko, once removed from NEST control, ended up so moody and depressed.  _ He does hate himself. It’s just that Tetsuji doesn’t have the conscience to recognize the truth. _

“Your inferiority complex is showing,” Neil says, breathless, before he spits blood onto the floor.

Tetsuji takes Neil by the throat. It is a very good thing that Neil doesn’t require much oxygen because he thinks otherwise he’d be choking, or passed out. Tetsuji walks Neil toward the steps in front of his throne, sharp things with sharp edges, and tosses him onto the ground.

“Kneel.”

“No.”

Tetsuji snaps. He doesn’t like the truly dirty work. Riko’s shell comes over and kicks Neil in the face. The burning of his jaw is immediately painful and his neck burns when his head snaps sideways. Neil watches bright spots swim in his vision and he blinks rapidly, struggling to regain focus.

The point Neil chooses to anchor himself with is a fissure on his arm. This is a new scar, unlike the simple ones that mark his shoulder blades or his legs. This scar is a Moriyama specialty. His hand feels different now and Neil knows that it is probably an enhancement of strength or speed. Maybe both.  _ They only accept the best. _ He wonders how fast he can type now.

There is a voice at the door to the room, or what Neil thinks is the door. He can’t really remember what any of the rooms in this place look like anymore, aside from the operation room.

“There is no time. He must go back.”

Neil feels a smile flicker onto his lips. He thinks he should hide it but Tetsuji isn’t paying attention. The man is turning away from Neil, sharp black shoes silent against the tiled floor. “When.”

“Tomorrow.”

Tetsuji waves a hand dismissively. Neil thinks it is for the messenger until he feels someone pull him upright. There is a starburst of pain in his lower back and the room goes white.

It takes an indeterminate amount of time for Neil to see again. He is conscious of being dragged out of the room and led through a few turns, but it’s useless for him to know how to navigate the place. He memorizes it anyway.

When Neil finally blinks back into his surroundings, he can see a familiar face. He inhales a ragged breath and feels like he is coming up for air for the first time. Riko drops him unceremoniously and in a voice vacant of any inflection says, “See to it.”

Jean’s hands are different. They are wide and cool; they remind Neil of the antithesis to Kevin. Everything about Jean is the antithesis of Kevin, a clear departure of form that the Moriyamas planned to nurture. Only Jean and Kevin were never supposed to be a pair.

_ It was us. I was supposed to be his fourth. _

“Shh,” Jean whispers. His voice flickers in and out like a ghost. Neil leans on Jean as he is led into their room, a quiet space with fewer sharp edges than rooms outside. It is not much kinder, but it is enough. “Sit.”

Neil sinks onto his bed. The sheets are rumpled and sweat-soaked; Neil hasn’t slept since he arrived. Not for more than an hour or two at a time. He is always being broken and mended, or being pulled away from his room to face walls of code and painful probing.

“I have to—”

“Shh.” Jean already has a warm cloth in his hands. He wipes off Neil’s face with practice, firm enough to clean the blood but not so harsh that he reopens the quickly-knitting wounds. Jean has a practiced hand and he can clean Neil in under a minute if he needs to.

Today, Neil wants him to linger.  _ I won’t be here long.  _ Neil blindly reaches with his left hand for Jean’s free hand and twines their fingers together. The first time he did this, Neil was delirious and looking for Aaron. Jean had pulled away, a gut instinct warning him. Sometime after the second surgery, they both gave up on pretenses.

_ We are all we have. And we have to survive. _

It feels strange being protected. Neil is aware enough to know that Jean protects him; he can tell when Jean has a bruise or two in the morning that he is attempting to cushion the ill-advised blows Neil manages to land when he is being worked on.  _ All that time shielding Aaron and now it feels like I’m the one getting in trouble. _

“Don’t move.” Jean smoothes a patch of flexible bio-tek onto Neil’s cheek, thumb pressing just enough to make it stick. “You can’t keep doing this. They’re going to change something you don’t want them to change.”

“Oh no. Whatever will I do without my sparkling personality?”

“Perhaps find someone willing to put up with you.”

Neil snorts. It hurts his nose and he winces before realizing that hurts, too. Jean shakes his head, brow furrowed as he applies a bio-tek strip across the bridge of Neil’s nose. “You cannot keep this up.”

“I don’t have to.” Neil stares at the patch of skin below Jean’s left eye. “They’re sending me back.”

Jean freezes. His hand shakes just enough for Neil to reach out and close his hand over it, grip tight. “I’m not going to leave you here.”

“You have to.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You will. Kevin did.”

Neil recoils. There is something sour in his throat. “I am not Kevin.”

Jean looks like he might cry. His voice is soft when he whispers, “I know you are not.”

“I am telling you I will not leave you here,” Neil repeats.  _ Say it more, make it true.  _ “It is not a promise. It is a fact.”

Jean looks down at the abandoned washcloth at his feet. It is pink on the edges with blood, blue-spotted with bio gel. “I have been here all my life. I know it will be longer.”

Neil shifts on the bed. His body still aches with the force of the blows dealt to it, strong enough to hurt but not so strong that he is broken.  _ With this thread, tie me to you.  _ “I will not leave you here. I will return, in weeks, to bring you home. You will not see another year within these walls.”

Not long ago, Neil would have dismissed this as another false promise. He knows better now. He knows in the blood and bones he has left that the words he has are not to be squandered. What he says cannot be a lie. Lies are a waste of air.  _ And I don’t have much left. _

Neil leans forward. He breathes out a sigh when his forehead presses against Jean’s. He always feels cooler.  _ You are warm,  _ Jean had said when Neil mentioned Jean’s body temperature.  _ So much energy, and you use it to fight them. _ He’d sounded tired when he said it, as if just thinking about Neil fighting exhausted him.

“Tell me if you believe me.”

Jean closes his eyes. “I don’t know how to.”

“Then I’ll teach you.” Neil shifts on the bed and reaches for the sheets. The edges are perfect and he hates them, so he rips at a stitch until it comes loose. Neil pulls on the thread until it is unraveling in his fingers.

“Don’t,” Jean says, panic lacing the word.

Neil presses his knee against Jean’s. He loops the thread around a finger on Jean’s right hand and says, “You have to repeat it with me.”

“What?”

“Say it with me.” Neil loops the thread a second time. “Say it more, make it true.”

Jean is holding his breath. He stares down at the thread as if it is magical, some kind of barrier against the rest of the word. “Say it more, make it true.”

Neil loops the thread a third time and ties it. “With this thread, tie me to you.”

“With this thread, tie me to you.”

Jean stares at the red string. Neil hands the other end to Jean. “Now you.”

A small flash of fear enters Jean’s eyes.  _ What if? _ Neil shakes his head. “They can’t touch it.”

“Say it more...make it true.” Jean loops the thread over Neil’s finger. “With this thread, tie me to you.”

There is a tiny shimmer along the thread. It is a wayward charm, old and forgotten, but Neil knows it. He remembers a woman’s voice whispering it to him and he remembers the feelings associated with the charm; safety, kindness, love. This magic is the kind that existed when magic first shone brightly enough for people to see. This charm is the kind that fell from the tongues of young lovers and first mothers, hearts calling out to a language they did not understand.

“What does it do?” Jean whispers.

Neil reaches out to hold Jean’s hand. The thread between them droops like a spiderweb, red and shimmering. “It ties us. It is more than a promise. It’s the truth.”

♅

Aaron has changed the buffers on Andrew’s empty space once again. There is no implant anymore, just a vacant slot where a connection used to be. It is not an unfamiliar feeling.

The Foxhole seems different. Different even from what it was when Neil first came. There is no longer an aura of mechanical working, every piece moving apart but moving forward nonetheless. Now, it seems like everyone is waiting together. They are all waiting for Neil.

_ He won’t come back.  _ Andrew can see him running off, finding some other useless mechanic to occupy his time and follow after him like he is the only thing that matters.  _ He won’t come back or he is dead. _

“If I knew I would be living in a graveyard again, I would have asked for a softer bed,” Andrew says. He throws the kitchen door open and rummages in the freezer. There doesn’t seem to be any ice cream.  _ Damn it. _

Aaron’s eyes slide to Andrew. He is making sandwiches—two of them—and he is gripping the knife with mayonnaise on it too tightly. “Too quiet for you now?”

“Oh, I love not being interrupted at every turn by petty arguments.”

“You start petty arguments,” Aaron says dangerously. He sounds like he thinks he knows shit. Andrew turns to stare at him.

“Guilty as charged. Isn’t Seth the pig? Or did you get a badge too?”

“You know, I was told to be patient with you.”

“No one told me to be patient with you. Which of us is stupid?”

“You’re mad,” Aaron says. His voice is suddenly calm and he slides his knife into the kitchen sink, careful not to make noise. “You’re mad because everyone is thinking about how Neil is gone. And you are, too.”

Andrew stares. “I am angry because there is no ice cream. Did you eat my ice cream?”

“You’re pissed because you don’t want him to matter, but he does. And you can’t stand that he matters to you, too.”

Aaron is smiling a little, bitter and sharp. Andrew ignores his irritation for just a minute to focus on the way Aaron looks like— _ me. He looks like me right now.  _ Aaron is turning something sharp inward, a knife held to his own throat. Andrew itches. If it were just a real knife, he could turn it away. This talking bullshit is harder.

“Yes. Yes, I am angry that I have to care about him because you do,” Andrew replies. It is untrue and that makes it weak. Weak words. Andrew hates them.

Aaron laughs. It sounds wrong. “I don’t know if you’re afraid of what I’ll do or afraid of what you’ll do.”

“I am not afraid.”

Aaron doesn’t have a chance to answer. Something pings in the dining room and Aaron pauses before turning away, leaving his sandwiches on the counter while he goes to the main computer. Andrew lingers in the kitchen, disquieted, and wonders how much Aaron knows.  _ What does he think he knows? _

When Andrew reaches the computer, Wymack is already there. Nicky is at his elbow, crowding close to read the message on the screen. Andrew knows immediately that it is from Neil. It is encoded, protected, and protected again. There are only three lines on the screen.

_ At the train station. Come get me. Delete and scrub. _

It shouldn’t seem ominous at all, but it does.

“Let’s go,” Aaron says. His voice is a rubber band pulled tight, threatening to snap. Break.

Nicky is already halfway to the door, one arm through the sleeve of his denim jacket. Wymack makes a noise of protest. “Guys, this was sent to me. Directly. I think—”

“Don’t,” Nicky replies cheerfully. He also sounds thin, a wire rusted in the middle.  _ Everyone is about to have a fucking breakdown. _

Someone peers over the banister. Kevin. “Where are you going?”

“Neil messaged. We’re picking him up,” Nicky shouts.

Another door slams open above Andrew’s head. Allison leans over the railing, blonde hair half-brushed. “What? Did you say Neil?”

“Stop!” Wymack shouts. He holds his palms to the sky like he is praying. Andrew doesn’t think it’ll do much good. “This is exactly what we shouldn’t do. Did it occur to you that a convoy is only going to draw attention?”

“Yeah? We can get him faster with more of us,” Nicky retorts.

“I’m not leaving him there,” Aaron says darkly.

Wymack rubs the bridge of his nose. “I am going to pick him up, and I’ll give him a fucking earful on the way back. You all will get your shit together and stay here.”

Kevin looks like he wants to interrupt. He’s been odd for the last few weeks since Neil left, like he has some momentous realization at the back of his mind that he’s been mulling over. It’s more introspective that Andrew knows Kevin to be.

“You need one person,” Kevin says suddenly.  _ Did he just do that?  _ “At least. Even if it’s a trap, you need the backup. The faster we get him back, the faster we plan to end this.”

Wymack narrows his eyes at Kevin.  _ Thin fucking ice,  _ he doesn’t say. Andrew hears it anyway.

“Fine. Me and Nicky.”

“No,” Aaron immediately protests. His sentiment and word are echoed by Kevin.

Nicky looks miffed for two seconds, staring down at Aaron. “I get it, Aaron. But seriously.”

“He might be—”

“If something is wrong, you are exactly the last thing he needs,” Kevin says quietly.

_ Oh, he’s right. He is very right.  _ Andrew thinks his heart is pounding and he isn’t sure why. He looks down at his hands and wonders if he can see his pulse throbbing under his skin. This is all so stupid. It’s all so painfully, hysterically stupid.  _ For one man. All for one man, and he is not a man at all. _

Wymack gestures. “Nicky. We’re leaving.”

Andrew watches Aaron clench his jacket in his fist before tossing it back onto a chair. He presses the heels of his hands against his forehead and paces toward the living room, mouth twisted in a furiously hopeless shape.

_ All for one man, and he is not a man at all. _

♅

Neil is not entirely conscious of what he is doing or what is around him. He has fleeting snatches of a train ride, empty cab, seats too soft, world flashing by in the windows. He thinks he set up a message when he was conscious because he feels it fly away from him, out toward a recipient he can’t really remember.

Movement stops. Neil does not know if he means to get up from his seat and walk off the train, but he does. Everything is busy. There are people, so many people, and he can’t process them. They slide over him like a waterfall over a rock and he is smoothed down in pieces, worn to nothingness. Blunted. He can’t drag himself away from it.

Somehow, Neil finds himself on a bench. He is unfeeling but acutely aware of several pains; his wrist burns, his legs burn, his left ear is ringing. He tries to focus but the world shimmers and shifts in his eyes like a mirage. He wonders if this is a place where he is the real one, and everything around him is fake.

Time flows like molasses. It sticks to Neil’s fingers and glues his eyes shut; he has to keep fighting to open them, look at the world, and try to see. There is a gnawing sense of wrongness at the back of his mind and he can’t tune into it. It is just out of reach. Everyone around Neil is moving too fast, hurried, their eyes passing over him if they turn in his direction at all. No one looks and no one sees.

Something static buzzes at Neil’s ear.  _ Implant,  _ he thinks fuzzily. Someone is trying to send out a signal to him. It feels like nails against a chalkboard just across the room, a distant but persistent unrest.  _ I can’t open it to just anyone. They’re looking for me. _ He can’t remember exactly what is happening and he thinks it might be the Moriyama he is thinking of, or NEST.  _ They’re looking and I have to move. _

“Oh, fuck.”

Neil recognizes the voice. It’s kind of rough, like the person is getting over losing their voice. There’s a whisper to it.  _ Nicky. _ He has to force himself to look, body moving in slow motion as he turns his head.

Nicky looks pale. He is no longer as golden as Neil remembers him; it might be the harsh lights of the station, or maybe it’s the shock. One of Nicky’s errant curls hangs over his left eye. “Neil. Neil, it’s me.”

“Nicky.” Neil says his name because he is afraid he can’t speak. Saying it doesn’t really help because then Neil realizes his throat is raw, and maybe that is because he was screaming—

—and a memory of that, screaming, comes to Neil as he sits there and his heart jumps and stutters painfully. He makes a noise and his mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

Well, at least until Neil says, “I may vomit.”

Neil doesn’t register being picked up until he is tucked against Nicky’s chest.  _ At least it still feels warm,  _ he thinks, and maybe he says it because he can see Nicky’s mouth tightening into an unhappy line. Nicky is walking them away from the station and Neil is glad, immensely glad to be away from the light at least until his relief is overcome by the urge to vacate his stomach.

Neil twists and Nicky holds him tight while Neil throws up into a trash can that must have appeared by magic, body coiling in pain as Neil becomes aware of a soreness at his torso. He feels like someone kicked him in the gut and abs—

— _ and they did, and they did more than that _ —

—Neil reels, nothing left in his body but pain, and blinks stars from his eyes. He notices Nicky’s shoes while he is curled to the side and laughs helplessly, the giggle as painful as everything else.

“Are you wearing rainbow shoes?”

“Yeah.” Nicky’s voice is strained. “Aren’t they cool? Renee painted the bottoms. Like her hair.”

“Like her hair,” Neil echoes. He thinks his words are coming out more slurred than he thinks they sound.

Something warm falls onto Neil’s cheek. It slips to the corner of his mouth, salty, and Neil looks up to find Nicky’s cheeks red. His eyes are red, too. “Why are you crying?” Neil asks. “You have rainbow shoes.”

Nicky sniffles and it sounds louder than Neil expects it to. He doesn’t get an answer but he does get Nicky carrying him away, further from the station. He can vaguely tell that Nicky is sending someone a message via his implant; the familiar crackle rests on the edges of Neil’s senses.

Neil feels faintly nauseous when Nicky maneuvers them into a car. He must make a distressing sound because Nicky’s hands tighten on his arms. “More?”

“No,” Neil mumbles. There’s nothing left for him to vomit. “What are we doing?”

“Going home,” Nicky whispers fiercely. “We’re going home, Neil.”

♅

Kevin ducks into Aaron’s room. Aaron stares at him for a few seconds, convinced he fell asleep somehow.

“I just—” Kevin looks around the room uselessly, hands twitching at his sides.

_ Kevin, at a loss for words.  _ “Why are you in my room?”

“He’s going to survive,” Kevin says. The words are clipped and not at all comforting, but they’re shocking. They’re shocking because Kevin says them and Aaron knows Kevin. He knows Kevin doesn’t lie or sugar-coat things. He’s not one for trite reassurances.

“You believe that?”

Kevin’s mouth twists into a vague approximation of a smile. “After everything, you think he won’t?”

“Neil and cockroaches,” Aaron mutters.

Kevin blinks. “I...what?”

“Two things left standing after a nuclear event,” Aaron explains. He sighs and presses his hands to his closed eyes. “Neil and cockroaches.”

There is a pause. Silence. Then Kevin says, “Seth’s truck.”

Aaron laughs. He doesn’t mean to and barely recognizes the sound when it comes out of his mouth. It’s true, he thinks, because Seth’s truck has been around since before he met any of them and it’s survived at least two bombs. Aaron has a fleeting image of Neil haphazardly navigating post-apocalyptic roads with a bevy of roaches on the dashboard.

Kevin can’t meet Aaron’s eyes. He looks a little red and Aaron realizes, “Are you blushing?”

“No.” Immediate denial. Kevin’s sharp squint is directed at Aaron before he looks away again, studiously focusing on the medic kit on Aaron’s desk.

“You are.”

“You’re embarrassing.”

“Me?”  _ You’re the one that blushed because _ —

— _ because what? _

The front door shuts downstairs. It is so careful and quiet that Aaron almost doesn’t hear it, but he is hyper aware of everything and he jumps to his feet.  _ Neil. _

“Wait,” Kevin says.

Aaron is already halfway out the door. “Not now.”

It’s a relief to avoid talking about whatever just happened, Aaron thinks. It’s a relief and Neil will probably tease him endlessly about it, but at least Aaron can tease Neil about Andrew while simultaneously begging him not do it. And then they can go in circles about doing things and Neil can make fun of Aaron and promise Aaron is the only Minyard he has ever wanted, laughing,  _ we’re already married, remember _ —

—and the second Aaron’s foot hits the last step, he is bitterly reminded that there is no relief. There never has been.

Nicky has Neil in his arms, a small, curled-up form of pain and flickering blue light. Neil has blue light bleeding all over his left eye, a bio-tek mesh pressed over his cheek to stop infection. He has mesh everywhere and new scars in other places, at his arms and legs.

If he were human, Neil would look like a murder victim.

“Jesus,” Aaron hears himself say. There’s a low ringing in his ears and he thinks he can smell rain in the air.

Wymack looks tired. He glances behind Aaron— _ he wanted Kevin to distract me, or prepare me _ —and shakes his head. “He needs Abby to look at him. We have to take him to the—”

“No,” Aaron says. The word sounds too violent and it hangs in the air, thick with electricity and emotion. “No one else knows how. I have to fix him.”

“Aaron—”

“No.” Aaron feels his throat tightening and he forces the sensation away, pointing at Nicky. “Follow me.”

Nicky doesn’t argue. He climbs the stairs and Aaron pretends not to notice the others and their opening doors, gasps and muttered words hanging in the air like smog while Aaron focuses on his bedroom door.  _ I’ll always be here when you get home, Aaron. Don’t forget. _ Words, so many words, fly through Aaron’s mind in clips like scattered newspaper.

“Put him on the bed,” Aaron says. He can’t look yet. He gathers his kit and pretends that this is just another terrifying shutdown, Neil going into self-preservation mode, but alive, still alive. Alive and fine. Just sleeping. Just quiet.

Not this.

When Aaron finally sits by the bed, he considers going into the bathroom just so he can be sick and get it over with. He can’t, though, not with Neil lying there half-conscious and bleeding magic.

He is bleeding. There are sparks everywhere and blue light in places it shouldn’t be. Neil’s left eye is an orb of color and magic, crackling and irritating the surrounding skin. Some of his veins are inflamed. He is meant to handle tek and magic, but there is too much for him.  _ He’s just a small body,  _ Aaron thinks distantly.  _ No one could handle this. No one. _

“That bad?” Neil mumbles. Aaron presses his arm against his eyes.  _ You can’t cry. _

Neil was cheeky when Aaron found him, too. More reticent but still cheeky. These are the same words, the same pain. Except it’s worse. “Nothing I can’t fix,” Aaron whispers. “I’m the best at what I do.”

“I won’t believe you,” Neil replies. His voice is hoarse and he smiles despite a bruise at the corner of his mouth. “Prove it.”

“I will.”

Aaron swallows past the rock in his throat and starts to work. He carefully categorizes the scars; they are new surgeries, not simple injuries, and he has to know what’s changed before he goes in and uses old tools on new components. Every augmentation feels like a slap to the face.  _ Here is how they changed him. And here. And here. _ They are all sinister little augmentations, small enough to escape notice but so monumental that they change entire aspects of Neil. He will be faster when he wakes. He will be stronger.

_ He’ll be hurt. _

However long it takes will never be long enough. Aaron knows it and he feels it in his chest, a hollow little reminder that Neil has to suffer longer because no tools and no craftsmanship will ever hold up to NEST. This is not the cutting edge. Aaron does what he can and tries to be quick about it because he knows it will hurt. I will continue to hurt.

_ Did they make him stay awake, just like Riko? _

_ How could he not turn out the same? _

Aaron is knitting shut a new seam at Neil’s leg when he notices the bleeding in Neil’s eye starting to subside. There’s no safe way to bring Neil out of whatever drugs or nano they gave him, so that was just one more thing Aaron had to wait on. He had to let it burn through.

A few minutes later, Neil finally speaks. “I didn’t know that transfusions made noise.”

It’s a good thing that Aaron is in between stitches. His hand shakes so badly he has to set his needle aside and take a breath. “What?”

“They feel…”

“Don’t.” Aaron presses the back of his arm to his eyes again. “Just...don’t.”

“Aaron?”

“I can’t.”

“Aaron.”

“Neil, please,” Aaron says. His voice cracks.

Neil’s hand is on Aaron’s wrist. Aaron can’t not look; he opens his eyes and finds Neil, one eye still too blue, honesty on his scarred face. “Aaron. It’s not your fault.”

“I should never have let you go,” Aaron hisses. The anger isn’t directed at Neil but it lashes out all the same, syllables snapping in the air.

Neil smiles a little. “You never could have stopped me.”

He is right. It has never mattered what Aaron tries to do or how he tries to explain. Neil just continues, always throwing himself in the way of the oncoming train.  _ There’s the light at the end of the tunnel,  _ he said, laughing.  _ I wonder if I can make it stop. _

“You left me,” Aaron says. He doesn’t mean to sound so broken but he does, and he thinks for a fleeting second that Neil deserves it.  _ He went, and why? _

The flash of pain in Neil’s eyes looks like it hurts more than any of his scars, and that is so much worse than anything else. Aaron hurts just looking at him. “I didn’t want to,” Neil whispers. His hand reaches blindly for Aaron. “I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t.” Aaron feels the tears finally break; he isn’t fast enough to press them away with his arm. They are spilling and he has to turn away from Neil so that they don’t fall on his new bio-tek mesh. “Don’t go where I can’t follow.”

Neil shuts his eyes. There are little blue sparks in the tears leaking from beneath his red-brown lashes. Aaron wonders if they are a million little wishes, unspoken charms crackling with potential before they fizz out in a mist of magic. Neil’s voice is watery when he asks, “Can you hold me?”

“I will.” Aaron pushes his things aside; the stitches are done and there is nothing else to do but this. There is nothing else he can do. He pulls Neil into his arms and tries not to think about the shaking hands twisted in his shirt. “I am not going to leave you. Never again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me avoiding my responsibilities by working on this fic rather than anything else when it's the one getting me the most negative attention


	12. maintain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I was in pieces, I looked up and tried to find the stars. Past the haze and the smoke.

Neil seemed to hang around the edges of the Foxhole. Sometimes Andrew would catch movement out of the corner of his eye and there Neil would be, gathering bread and cheese in his hands, skirting the edge of the room and leaving without a sound. It was like Neil was a ghost always avoiding cameras, unseen by more than one person at a time and impossible to prove.

Andrew got sick of Neil’s not-present presence after two days. The third, Andrew found Neil escaping toward the balcony. Andrew was on the ground, smoking just outside the house, and he looked up to find Neil’s hand curled on the edge of the banister. This is how Andrew ends up at the sliding door to the balcony, sputtering cigarette in hand.

_ Why am I waiting? _

Annoying. Andrew presses his lips together; it feels like there is something in his mouth trying to get out and he’s not sure what. He slides the balcony door open and steps out, keeping himself one step away from Neil. “This is very dramatic of you.”

Neil looks up at Andrew, expression blank. “How is sitting on the balcony dramatic?”

“It’s what heartbroken damsels in distress do,” Andrew replies. He isn’t sure why he started the conversation this way or why he feels bad for doing so. There is acid in his throat, unwelcome, crowding out the nicotine he wants.

Neil has a not-smile on his lips. It reminds Andrew of a mirror and he doesn’t want to look at it. “Broken heart? I guess.”

“Can you have heartbreak?”  _ You’re not even real. _

They are ugly words. Looking at Neil, Andrew can see everything he has seen before. He can see scars and pain and a tired, threadbare wish. He can see a human.

But that’s not real.

“I have to ask you something,” Neil says. His eyes turn to Andrew like he is being forced to look. Forced to ask.

Andrew’s skin itches. He wants to push his fingers beneath and scratch at something, his bones maybe, and dislodge the disquiet he feels when Neil’s blue eyes rest on him. “What.”

“I know he told you not to look after him,” Neil begins.

“I won’t,” Andrew says immediately.  _ I know what you are going to ask. I know what you want, robot boy. _

Neil continues anyway, as if he is deaf. As if he is stupid.  _ He is.  _ “But he is not asking you. I am.”

“Why would I say yes to you?”

“I’ll make a deal.”

“You have nothing I want.”

“Do I?” Neil pulls his legs up from the edge of the balcony. Andrew tenses when Neil pushes himself up and thinks  _ he would sit right where he could fall, is he going to fall?  _

“What do you want, Andrew?”

“Nothing.”

“I have that,” Neil says quietly. Andrew almost misses it, it nearly gets lost in the breeze. “What do you want? To kill Riko?”

_ Maybe.  _ Andrew doesn’t answer. He isn’t sure what is happening but it feels weighty. Important. He doesn’t like the thought of making promises to a robot and he doesn’t like that in his head, robot seems like a bad word.  _ That’s what he is. He isn’t real. He’s not. _

_ Why do I feel like I’m lying? _

Neil inspects his arms. They have new blue seams, places where augmentation and surgery have made indelible marks. Neil is not so expensive as Riko. He is a restored antique, like an old car that NEST took and reshaped as they wanted. If Neil is broken or visibly repaired, it doesn’t matter. He isn’t cutting edge. He’s a pet project. He is just a little less than Kevin.

Andrew hates it.

“Kevin,” Neil says. Andrew almost thinks he spoke out loud but Neil flexes his fingers, introspective. He wouldn’t have heard if Andrew had said it. “What if I promise to save Kevin?”

There is a small chill running up Andrew’s spine. He doesn’t like the way Neil’s proposition sounds. Andrew steps closer to Neil, attuned to any withdrawal. Instead, he watches Neil shift toward Andrew, posture open. Inviting, even.

_That’s not right._ _It can’t be._

“What do you know?” Andrew asks lowly. He is gripping the cigarette too tightly and it spits a glowing ember at Neil.

Neil leans in, breathes in. Andrew holds himself perfectly still and tries not to think too much about what is happening. He is ready to leave if he needs to. Jump over the banister. Neil exhales through his mouth, eyes half-lidded.

_ I think I already knew that I wanted to look,  _ Andrew thinks.  _ So why am I letting myself? _

“I know NEST is after him and he is stupid enough to throw himself into things in a way he shouldn’t,” Neil says. “I know when the time comes, he’ll be in the crossfire, and he might freeze. He might throw himself between Jean and them.”

“And?”

“And I can throw myself between him and them,” Neil finally says. He tilts his head closer to Andrew— _ is it me or the smoke? _ —and sucks in another breath. “Do what I need to.”

_ You already will,  _ Andrew wants to say, because it’s true. He sees it happen and he knows he is right but somehow, the words don’t leave his mouth. He doesn’t want to end the conversation here. He could, but he doesn’t want to.  _ Doesn’t matter what you want. _ Andrew shakes his head; he catches a flicker of desperation in Neil’s eyes, like Neil thinks it is a no.

“The last thing I need is two fools throwing themselves in front of a train,” Andrew says.

_ But,  _ he doesn’t add.  _ But, I could use someone else to look after him. _ Neil hears the silence and nods, holding himself impossibly still, as if Andrew is a wild animal he doesn’t want to scare off.

“Okay. I will protect him,” Neil says. He doesn’t say  _ I promise  _ and Andrew hates that he likes that. “You protect Aaron.”

_ And why does it feel like we are making a trade that doesn’t need to be made? _

Andrew sighs through his nose. He doesn’t want to compromise too much, so he silently offers a cigarette to Neil. Neil shakes his head.

_ What is that supposed to mean? He was breathing in like an addict. Doesn’t want to smoke? Then what? _

_ Not me. _

Andrew presses his lips together harder. He can’t say anything yet; if he does, he thinks it will be something he can’t take back. Something that gives more truth he doesn’t want to yet. “You can’t decide to leave him like you did—”

“I didn’t decide to leave Aaron,” Neil says fiercely. It sounds like a curse coming from his lips. “I won’t. Not if you don’t keep Aaron locked away from life. Imprisoning him isn’t protecting him.”

“Spoken like someone that has never been imprisoned.”

_ Petty.  _ It’s a petty, stupid lie and Andrew isn’t sure why he says it. He’s not sure what he means anymore or why their conversation can’t be…

... _ what? Pleasant? _

Neil narrows his eyes. He doesn’t seem angry, but there is a sharpness to him, like he’s evaluating Andrew. “Everyone has pain, Andrew. What are you doing with it?”

Andrew crushes the last bits of paper and toxin in his palm. The burn doesn’t feel hot. “Buying more cigarettes.”

♅

Kevin is staring.

The thing about Kevin is that he doesn’t have the same filters as most humans.  _ Pot, kettle.  _ With Kevin, everything is maintained and restrained. He holds emotions in check like dogs on a leash.

What isn’t held back with Kevin is his opinion, because his opinions are what he believes to be fact, and what he believes to be fact is what NEST taught him. Kevin operates under strict facts like some people are Christian. He is also just as persistent as a missionary.

Anyway, Kevin is staring and Neil can just hear his comments already.  _ You are not fast enough. You need to work harder.  _ Nothing soft, everything matter-of-fact.

Which is why Neil chokes on his juice when Kevin asks, “How do you do it?”

Kevin does not ask for advice.

“What? Do what?” Neil coughs, the silver-backed pouch in his hand set carefully on the floor next to Neil’s crossed legs. He is supposed to be training, but he only went to the training room to eat in silence, somewhere the others wouldn’t look at him with pity.

Kevin looks annoyed and that is more familiar. It only serves to unsettle Neil even more because it reminds him that this is clearly Kevin and not a robot replacement. This is the real Kevin and the real Kevin is asking Neil something that isn’t  _ what did you just eat. _

“I mean...you went. For Aaron,” Kevin says vaguely. He sounds like even he doesn’t know what he means to ask. “But you just…even before, you...I don’t know. You wanted to fight.”

Neil rubs the back of his hand against his chin. He licks stray juice from his skin as he processes the concept of Kevin admitting he doesn’t know something and Kevin acting like he’s in awe of Neil. Of  _ Neil _ .

“Of course I did,” Neil ventures carefully. “Did you think I worked for them?”  _ Did Andrew say that? _

“No,” Kevin says dismissively. “No. I mean, you didn’t have to fight. So why?”

“Didn’t have to? What, and you thought they’d magically leave me alone? Or Aaron?”

“You ran so far.” Kevin stares at Neil and it is the only thing about his questioning that doesn’t waver. Neil tries not to squirm under his scrutiny. “You could have run. Why did you stay?”

_ What? _

Neil stares at Kevin. He stares and waits for the other shoe to drop but it doesn’t. He waits for Kevin to hear himself talking and realize but that doesn’t happen either. Neil waits for painful seconds for Kevin to realize but Kevin doesn’t realize and Neil thinks he might lose his mind.

Neil throws his hands up. “For you, you fucking moron!”

Kevin’s reaction comes a beat late. “What?”

“What, you think you can do it alone?” Neil raises his eyebrows. “I’m here to help you. You.”

“But I—” Kevin shakes his head; his cheeks are reddening. “For me? You’re staying just for me?”

“Well, don’t get too excited,” Neil mutters. “I’m already married to Aaron. If I say yes to you, too, I’m going to need a bigger room.”

Kevin looks wholly confused. Still, it’s nicer than him looking like he’s some sort of detective preparing to dig into Neil’s life.  _ He is the closest to knowing what I am. Who I am. _ Neil shakes the thought out of his head and sighs. He didn’t expect to be having this conversation so soon, but it makes sense.  _ I”m the one that told him to figure out how much he was willing to sacrifice. _

“Look, I’m here to help because I know it will never end. Not so long as NEST stands,” Neil finally explains. “We bring them down and I never have to run again.”  _ Because I’ll be dead.  _ “We bring them down and Aaron doesn’t have to worry. No one does.”

“But how?” Kevin presses, voice thin with disbelief. “How do you stand here and know what will happen? They’ll—”

“They’ll try to kill me. Try,” Neil repeats. “And maybe succeed. If they do, you’ll have enough time to win. If they don’t, I’ll make sure to get in an extra hit just for the hell of it.”

“I don’t get it.” Kevin shakes his head and snatches an unopened juice from beside Neil’s knee. Neil watches Kevin puncture the pouch and raises his eyebrows, impressed. “This is… bullshit.”

Neil narrows his eyes. “Have you been hanging around Aaron?”

“No.”

“Your ears say yes.”

Kevin pointedly turns his face away but Neil can still tell it’s red. “Well, you...you saw…”

The unspoken question lingers.  _ You saw what they can do. You saw what happened to Riko. how can you say you’ll fight them to the death? _

Neil inhales slowly. He is dreading the words he has to speak almost as much as he is dreading the moment he has to face Tetsuji.

“I used to look up to you,” Neil says. “Well. I mean, I still—”

“Wait. What…” Kevin blinks furiously. He looks caught between flattery and suspicion.

“Rude,” Neil says, a finger raised between them. Kevin makes a noise of protest. “I’m serious. I would see your face everywhere and I would hear about you, and...I was pissed.”

“I don’t think you know what looking up to someone means.”

“Shut up. I would see you and I’d think, ‘wow, that bastard is really on top of it all,’” Neil continues.

Kevin makes another frustrated bird noise and tosses his hands up. “Are you trying to start a fight? If you want to fight—”

“You’re not listening,” Neil realizes, voice flat. “I’m trying to tell you that I thought you made it out. I thought you managed to survive the Moriyama hell and go on to be the best. The best systems analyst, the best hacker, the best.”

“I don’t…”

“I was jealous and I wanted to be just like you. But better,” Neil adds quietly. “Instead, I was stuck rotting in an alley until Aaron found me.”

Kevin looks down at his hand. There’s a curious separation in the way he stares at it, like he’s one moment away from cutting it off. Neil wouldn’t be surprised.

“That’s not how it was,” Kevin says quietly. He looks up from his hand and there is a desperate fire in his eyes, as if Neil is the important one and Kevin has to prove himself. “I didn’t...it wasn’t…”

“I know.”

“I’ve never been out.”

“I know.” Neil rolls the thin straw of his juice in his fingers. “But the thought made me stronger. Thinking that you somehow did it and I hadn’t made me angry. It made me fight when I was in pieces.”

“Fueled by rage,” Kevin mutters, an ironic half-smile on his lips. “Makes sense.”

There’s a private joke in Kevin’s words that Neil doesn’t understand. He has an inkling who it’s about, but Neil chooses not to think about that. Instead, he adds, “I did know I was lying to myself, in a way. But I still thought at some points that if I were part of them, I could just keep my head down enough to get what I wanted and plot to bring them down from the inside.”

“It’s more than I did.”

“Well. You were brainwashed and beat up by Riko, who I’m assuming seemed like he had a split personality because of the forcible takeovers. I think we can cut you some slack. A little.”

Kevin huffs. It’s not quite a laugh but Neil doesn’t expect he’ll hear one before he dies. Kevin has been through too much to just come out the other end laughing and smiling. That kind of thing would take time.  _ More time than I have. _

There would never be enough time. It burned Neil when he first came back to the Foxhole; he saw everyone and all he could think was how little time he had and how much he had to do. Neil could never fix them all in the time he has, and he could never make a dent in the rifts that have grown between these people he only just met.  _ But I have to. It has to be enough. Because when I’m gone, they will have to put things back together again. _

It feels a little bit like cheating. Neil gets to die and everyone else has to go on and make something of the burning world that will be left after NEST is torn apart. If he could, Neil thinks he would drag his body from the grave just to throw himself back into the mess.  _ Just so I don’t leave them alone. Alone against all of this. _

“What?” Kevin pauses, gaze flickering over Neil questioningly. “Still thinking about how jealous you were when you didn’t know me?”

“No. Thinking about how I don’t want to leave Aaron alone.”

_ I shouldn’t have said that.  _ The words are out already; Neil presses his lips together and hopes nothing else will come out. He hopes Kevin will forget.

Kevin noisily empties his juice. When he finishes, he tosses the empty packet into the trash can across the room. “He’s not alone. He has Andrew. And Nicky.”

“Did you mean to comfort me?”

“Worth a shot.”

Neil thinks he’s smiling. He’s thinking about Andrew and Nicky, one distant and the other too familiar, huddling around Aaron while the world burns.  _ I guess that can’t be too bad. Maybe they could do a better job than me. _

“You’re not included?” Neil raises an eyebrow. “Or am I supposed to pretend you’re not spending time with him?”

“I liked you better when you looked up to me.”

Neil laughs. “I’m sure you would have.”

♅

“We’ll be fine,” Nicky says breezily.

Aaron is sitting beside Neil at the kitchen table. They’ve been watching Aaron and Wymack go back and forth for some time now, like it’s a tennis match where they are the ball being batted back and forth.

Wymack rubs his forehead for the hundredth time. “I’ve already explained how stupid it is to take Neil, a very obvious robot, out in public after he just managed to get back to us from NEST by the grace of fucking God.”

“I didn’t fuck God,” Neil supplies helpfully. Aaron jabs Neil in the side with his elbow.

Nicky placatingly holds his hands out toward Neil. “See? The poor little guy’s going insane already. You can’t keep him locked up here. I mean, realistically, NEST has already attacked us here once.”

“He is right about that,” Aaron notes. Wymack glares at him.

Neil squints. “Hey, I never got an answer about why—”

“Jesus,” Wymack mutters. “I should let you go just so you can get fucking murdered.”

“That’ll teach them,” Andrew says dryly from the staircase.

“We’ll be fine,” Nicky repeats again, dramatically slapping his hands on the table and leaning forward to make puppy eyes at Wymack. Wymack looks like he might vomit, or punch something. “Come on. We’re not going far and he’ll be...uh...dressed more...appropriately.”

“There is nothing inherently vulgar about my thighs,” Neil says, purposefully uncrossing his legs and crossing them again. Aaron fights a laugh.

Then he hears Andrew mutter, “That’s what you think.”

Aaron turns to stare over his shoulder. Andrew pointedly doesn’t look at Aaron.

“Fuck it. Fuck all of you,” Wymack says, pointing at the gathered crowd. “Go on. But don’t come running back crying when you get swarmed by bots.”

“You worry too much,” Nicky says cheerfully. He pats Wymack’s shoulder and beckons to Neil and Aaron. “C’mon, let’s go shopping. I’ll buy you ice cream.”

“Hey,” Andrew says reproachfully from the staircase.

“Don’t worry! I’ll get you a pint,” Nicky promises, already halfway to the door.

Aaron keeps an eye on Neil as he follows Nicky out of the Foxhole. Neil hasn’t been quiet, exactly—in fact, he’s been a little more vocal. He’s also been doing things Aaron never expected him to do.

Like giving Kevin strength to fight.

Kevin has never really been a coward, but he hasn’t exactly been the driving force of an underground resistance. Kevin’s leadership is the type that is too self-aware. He’s always known what he is. When Kevin first appeared before Wymack, Matt and Dan expected things from him. They expected Kevin to have the knowledge and the passion to help bring NEST down, not just because they had wronged him but because he knew how much they had wronged everyone else. Even Nicky had been attentive at first, sure that Kevin had some secrets that he could share to help end the war that no one seemed to acknowledge.

Instead, all the Foxes got was another casualty of NEST. Kevin didn’t come in with guns blazing; he barely agreed to tell the Foxes about NEST security protocols. Everyone knew there was much more he kept to himself, and some of them didn’t know whether it was for their safety or because of a lingering sense of loyalty.

That lingering sense of loyalty was what drove everyone apart. It made Seth leave and it made Aaron leave right behind him, when he couldn’t stand Andrew standing with Kevin any longer.

“You’re thinking too much,” Neil says. Aaron finds his arm occupied by Neil, whose scars are hidden by long black sleeves. He’s more dressed than he usually is in a turtleneck and some of Aaron’s work pants, and he almost looks like Riko.

_ Like Riko right before he died. _

Aaron shakes his head. He keeps wondering what it must have looked like. If Neil saw it happen and thought  _ this is what will happen to me when I die. _

“Sure. You don’t think enough,” Aaron says. He doesn’t mean to sound as angry as he does.

Neil’s hand twitches like he’s considering pulling away. Aaron slaps a hand over Neil’s to keep it in place. “That’s why we work together.”

Nicky groans suddenly, hand pressed onto his face. He stops in his tracks and Aaron frowns, glancing around them. “What?”

“You’re so gay,” Nicky says quietly. “You are both so very—”

“Hey,” Neil interrupts. He points up, toward the jagged skyline made by the mismatched buildings around them. There are objects moving closer.

“Ah, fuck,” Aaron spits. He can already hear  _ I fucking told you  _ echoing in his ears. He would argue that he never wanted to agree to go out, but here he is. “Wymack’s gonna kill us.”

“Or those bots will,” Nicky says, voice cheerfully tense. He sighs forlornly as he stares down the sidewalk and towards the distant fork in the road that leads toward the shopping center they were going to. “Damn. I wanted churros.”

“We can still go,” Neil supplies helpfully. “Just need to take care of them first. I might burn my shirt, though—”

“Oh, no. You two aren’t fighting,” Nicky says immediately. Aaron rolls his eyes. “You’ve done enough of that. Just give me a few minutes, all right?”

Neil looks to Aaron, disbelieving. His reddish-brown eyebrows are bunched up and his gaze keeps flicking to Nicky like he expects some sort of explanation. Aaron waves a hand dismissively. It’s harder to explain than it will be to just let Neil see.

Nicky holds his arms out at his sides and then slaps his hands together. There’s a flicker of light and then copper-gold sparks burst from his joined palms. Aaron can see Nicky’s jaw clench as Nicky pulls his hands apart, a form taking shape between them. It’s not a particularly artistic or smooth change. It actually looks painstaking. When Aaron first saw it, he’d been torn between awe and crushing sadness.

Sadness because there was no happy way to explain how Nicky pulls a sword from his palms, coppery-gold colored biotek blood dripping from the gashes it leaves behind.

Neil’s face is completely flat. Aaron is almost insulted on Nicky’s behalf until Neil says, “Oh. That’s where it came from.”

Neil probably understand better than anyone that some scars don’t heal. They just sit there on the skin, a physical reminder of violence and pain.  _ Maybe he didn’t see before, but he sees now.  _ No one in the Foxhole has escaped their demons unmarked.

Nicky sighs. “May want to step back. This isn’t as precise as hacking.”

Neil barely takes three steps back. His sharp blue eyes are focused on Nicky like he is recording every second of the fight. He might be, Aaron thinks, if only to use as practice later.

Nicky was wrong about precision. When the first hovering drone descends, Nicky manages to jump high enough to drive his sword into the center of the thing, sparks flying while the bot loses altitude. Nicky jumps from it, sword pulled out in one swift motion, and uses the momentum to grab a nearby windowsill. He pushes his feet under him and uses the apartment building he clings to as a springboard, soaring away from it and finding his next mark.

One of the other bots shoots. Neil tenses, body twitching like he’s having trouble standing still. Nicky flicks his wrist and deflects the plasma bullet hurtling toward him; his sword vibrates with crackling energy.

“It’s absorbing it,” Neil says quietly. Aaron doesn’t have to answer.

Nicky flourishes his sword in a sweeping motion and a ripple of energy blasts forth from it, the magic and tek sparks glittering in the air before they hit the three other bots hovering near Nicky. The static energy is enough to stun the bots and Nicky jumps on one, balancing simply and hopping onto the others, stabbing and cutting as he goes. This is a ballet of motion and energy, quick movements paired with blunt force.

There is one last bot. It has a bigger blast prepared and Aaron watches Nicky negotiate his footing on a falling bot while the plasma hurtles toward him. There’s a small  _ oof _ as Nicky manages his deflection, sword vibrating in his hand before slices the air in an arc again, sending the kinetic force back at the bot across from him. The bot shatters in midair, pieces falling to the ground and burning into black dust as they go.

Nicky hits the ground right when a nearby speed limit sign bends in half. He winces, one eye closed his hand pushing through his curly hair. “Damn. My bad.”

“I think that was good, actually. Not bad,” Neil says flatly.

“Oh, thanks.” Nicky isn’t paying enough attention to realize the compliment. He sighs and twists his sword in a complicated figure, residual dust and energy flicking off it like water from a towel.

_ When did I forget to be proud of him? _ The thought rests uncomfortably on Aaron’s shoulders. He thinks about Erik, Nicky’s partner in another country, and wonders if Erik tells Nicky that he’s incredible.  _ Does anyone? They should. _

“How do you…” Neil shuts his mouth, question unfinished and already answered as he watches Nicky.

This is the part Aaron likes the least. Nicky presses the tip of his sword into his left palm and lets it slice into the still-ragged wound. He pushes until he can press his other hand to the hilt and then slowly absorbs the sword again, patiently watching as the blade disappears.

It hurts. Aaron knows it does. Yet Nicky does it simply, like it was no problem to pull the sword out and it’s no problem to shove it right back into his body, where it inhabits his bones and veins. Where it is sharp against his muscles.

“You didn’t have to,” Neil says. Aaron knows him well enough to hear the misery in Neil’s voice. “Hacking it would have been easy for me.”

Nicky presses his hands together, watching the biotek blood sluggishly pool. “Sure. It was easy for me, too.”

Aaron can practically hear Neil’s thoughts.  _ Don’t do this just for me.  _ It was the same thing Aaron told Nicky once, when Nicky first came to take Andrew and Aaron somewhere safe.  _ I won’t leave you alone,  _ Nicky had said. Aaron had watched him pull the sword out for the first time and thought  _ you were the one that shouldn’t have been left alone. _

“Stop doing that,” Aaron blurts, waving a hand at Nicky. He can’t talk about this here, now, while he can still feel the sting of guilt for everything he’s never done. Aaron snaps with his left hand and his medic augmentations flicker with soft red light, a panel illuminating above the skin of his knuckles.

Nicky  _ oohs  _ excitedly. “I get nurse Aaron? Oh man, I must be the luckiest girl on earth.”

“Shut up. And stop pressing your damn hands together; it’s not helping.”

Aaron tries not to think too much about how Nicky’s skin is already knitting itself shut. He cleans the wounds and slides mesh into place that he knows won’t change the scars. All it will do is ensure that there is no pain while the cuts heal. No outward pain, at least.

Neil is looking at Nicky’s hands. Aaron knows the look on his face and he tries to stare at the side of Neil’s face, willing him to look up so Aaron can say  _ don’t. _

Neil asks, “Who did that?”

_ Oh, for fuck’s sake. _

Nicky looks up, surprised. “What?”

“Who did it?”

Nicky shifts slightly to face Neil, a bemused smile on his lips. He doesn’t seem angry or sad and it’s strange. Wrong. Aaron fumbles for something to say, anything that will stop this conversation from happening.

“My parents,” Nicky finally says. Aaron feels like he’s burning from the inside out. “You know, I don’t think I’ve said that out loud before. Maybe once?”

Neil’s eyes dart to Aaron, confused. “What do you mean?”

“We don’t talk about things like this out loud,” Nicky says in a fake stage whisper. “Unless you’re Andrew. But Andrew only ever says it in private, while he’s systematically taking people apart.”

“Why not?” Neil pushes. “They did it. People should know.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nicky shrugs. He doesn’t say it the way Aaron remembers, defensive, turning the topic away.

It strikes Aaron that the difference he’s hearing is a lack of hope.  _ He’s not hoping he’s wrong anymore. He’s not hoping things can change. _

_ He’s given up on them. _

Aaron can’t help staring. He stares at Nicky and wonders why and how. He wonders what happened for Nicky’s parents to end up with a child like him, who took time away from his life to raise his cousins and do everything he could to keep them safe. Keep them safe while he was barely held together with still-tacky glue, the horrors of his life overlapping everything else.

Nicky glances at Aaron. His gaze rests on Aaron a beat longer than it has to, and those seconds are enough to say,  _ I know. _

_It’s over now._ _We’re safe._

Aaron finishes his work and turns away, pretending to wipe off his hands. He’s trying not to cry.

“Well, it’s nice to know where it came from,” Neil says. He sounds the way he does when he’s trying to cheer Aaron up, deceptively nonchalant and vapid in a way that Neil is not. “All this time I wondered if you were the guy that collects swords.”

“Oh, gross.” Nicky shudders, nose wrinkled. “Keep that heterosexual propaganda away from me. Man with swords? Gross.”

“So it’s Allison that has the swords, then? Or Renee?”

“I’ll let you figure that one out.”

“Aaron,” Neil says suddenly. Aaron blinks and turns around, aware that he is stuck in place. “Come on. I want ice cream.”

“Yeah. Right.” Aaron falls into step, on Neil’s left where Nicky is on Neil’s right, and wonders  _ how did we end up here? _

Somehow, he has the feeling that it has something to do with Neil. It usually does.

He’s not mad about that.

♅

Andrew is on the balcony this time, dangling his legs and smoking like a damsel in distress.  _ If he could hear me think, he would kill me,  _ Neil thinks.

Neil closes the sliding door behind him when he steps onto the balcony. It’s vaguely warm outside, but not enough to be hot. He has ice cream in his hands; a pint for Andrew, picked out by Aaron, who had been very strange about giving it to Neil.  _ Here,  _ Aaron had said, as if it were a precious family heirloom.  _ Give it to him. _

Andrew doesn’t turn around. One of his knees is pressed up to his chest and his arm dangles over it, cigarette trailing smoke into the night sky. The balcony light is off, so the only thing brightening the space is the moon. It seems to make Andrew paler than usual. He almost seems like a ghost; Neil is suddenly hit by the urge to reach out and touch him, just to make sure he is actually there.

He doesn’t, obviously. Neil steps up to the banister next to Andrew and says, “I bring frozen dairy.”

“Disgusting.” Andrew’s lip curls. His comment could be directed at either Neil or his choice of words; it’s unclear. Andrew extends his cigarette-free hand, fingers beckoning.

Neil hands over the ice cream and spoon. He leans his elbows on the flat edge of the banister and looks up at the sky.  _ When I was in pieces, I looked up and tried to find the stars. Past the haze and the smoke. _

“Dramatic,” Andrew says.

Neil looks down at Andrew. “Are we on D words? Is it my turn?”

Andrew’s brows lower. His knuckles pale a little, like he’s holding his spoon too tightly. Neil wonders if Andrew is ready to kill him with it.  _ An extremely slow death. _

The sounds of the others inside are audible despite the closed door. Neil can hear their laughter, uneven and coming in lazy waves. They are happy, maybe.  _ Maybe I helped.  _ When Neil took the ice cream, he left Aaron standing next to Seth and Kevin, who were happily bickering about something. Kevin’s friend Jeremy had finally answered a request to hide Jean after breaking him out. Seth was endlessly teasing Kevin about it.

“What are you still doing here?” Andrew’s question is so quiet Neil almost doesn’t hear it. He looks down again and finds Andrew digging a chocolate-coated something out of his ice cream.

It feels like a question deeper than it sounds. Neil takes his time answering. “I told Aaron I’d get him out of this. I couldn’t just stay there being tortured.”

He means it to come out jokingly, maybe deflect the heavy mood, but it doesn’t sound that way. It sounds almost as tired as he is. Neil presses his thumb into the corner of his mouth until he can feel his teeth through his skin, something metallic in his mouth.  _ Don’t. _

“So you came back just to make a deal with me,” Andrew says flatly.

“Not really.” Neil runs his thumb under his bottom lip. One time, after his father hit him so hard it split, his mother had stitched the cut.  _ So you don’t forget what happens when you say things like that. _ “That was lucky of me. I just came back to make sure you hadn’t torn each other to pieces in the meantime.”

Andrew is on his feet. Neil avoids looking directly at him; he feels like he is dealing with a particularly vicious cat and he needs to do things slowly. He has to let Andrew be in control of this because Neil doesn’t mind and Andrew needs it.

“You came back to make them a happy little family and make sure Aaron was looked after.”

“Yeah.”

“And you did this because of a promise.”

“No. I don’t make promises. I just tell the truth.” Neil shuts his eyes and imagines the Foxhole after he is gone, quiet but whole, people leaning on one another while they continue in an uncertain world. “I did this for love I shouldn’t have.”

This might be a dream. Neil shouldn’t be saying these things, least of all to Andrew, but he does. Things don’t feel quite real. There is a film between Neil and the world, his body separate from reality but so very heavy.

Something—someone—is touching his face. Neil feels a hand on his jaw and his head turns, careful, until he is looking at Andrew. He is surprised that Andrew feels warm. Andrew’s hand slides to the back of Neil’s neck, a steady weight over the most dangerous place there is. If he pressed, Andrew could dig his nails into the ports and implants at the back of Neil’s neck. The secret place where death could take him.

Andrew presses, but not with his nails—with his fingertips, a suggestion and not a compulsion, though Neil feels very compelled. Neil leans in when Andrew does and feels hesitation, a nose bumping against his. There is a hot breath ghosting across Neil’s lips before anything else and he wonders what it is he wants; he can’t think of how to explain it.

He knows. Andrew knows, somehow, or maybe he already knew. Andrew’s lips press against Neil’s and Neil can see all the stars beneath his eyelids. They’re illuminated somehow by the spark between them, a fire burning up the sky while Neil tries to keep his feet steady on the ground.  _ This doesn’t make sense,  _ Neil thinks, but he finds he doesn’t really care. If it’s a dream, it’s the only good one he’s ever had.

Andrew’s palm is warm on Neil’s neck. It feels like every vein and artery in Neil’s body pumps in time, heat rising to the surface of his skin as the world swirls. Andrew’s tongue presses against Neil’s lips and Neil feels his mouth fall open, a sharp intake of breath like swallowing a pill, sudden warmth and wetness blocking out his ability to think.

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Neil has hands but the rest of his body is both there and not there at all, everything blurring past the sensation of Andrew kissing him. Neil thinks his ears are ringing. He thinks he should be doing something with his hands.

There’s a soft hiss of air and then Andrew pulls back, squinting faintly as his eyes dart over Neil. There is color to him now, on his face. His lips. They look redder and Neil is suddenly stuck in a loop of images replayed in his mind, Andrew leaning into him—

—“What was that,” Andrew says, breaking Neil from his thoughts. “The sound.”

Andrew sounds like he wants to murder the sound and Neil thoughtlessly agrees. It interrupted. It takes Neil a few seconds to comprehend and then he self-consciously presses his fingers to the bluish seams on his arms, shrugging dazedly.

“Um. I...might need maintenance.”

Andrew stares at Neil. He might be questioning his choice to kiss Neil, or perhaps his choice to stop and ask. What he ends up muttering is, “Fucking maintenance.”

Neil has to agree. He does, verbally, but the words get lost halfway in Andrew’s mouth.

_ Fucking maintenance, _ Neil thinks while Andrew presses his hands onto the banister behind him. His inner voice sounds pretty damn happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sweet sweet victory (and tongue)


	13. a place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’ve had help,” Kevin says shakily before Andrew can stop him. “They’re dead now.”  
> “Helpful of them.”

Aaron is making sandwiches when he feels someone tap him on the shoulder. He turns to see Neil looking at him, face set in an expression of determination and seriousness. His mouth opens but nothing comes out.

Neil holds up a finger to Aaron’s face and says, “Nope.”

Aaron watches, confused and stunned, while Neil turns on his heel and walks away. It takes him a second to catch up to what happened and then he darts after Neil, barely avoiding the kitchen door as it swings shut. “Hey! Neil, wait!”

Neil pauses in the hallway between the kitchen and the gym room. Aaron skids to a halt too slow behind him, bumping into Neil and backpedaling as quickly as he can. “Woah. What the fuck, Neil?”

Aaron carefully steps around Neil to look him in the eye. Neil’s eyes are squinty in the way that says he is thinking too much and his mouth is pressed into a line. “Eh…”

“Use your words,” Aaron says dryly, but his heart is thudding in his chest.  _ Is it NEST? Did someone contact him? _

_ Is he dying? _

Neil clamps his mouth shut, finally looks at Aaron, and then blurts, “Andrew kissed me.”

“Wh…”

“I mean. I wasn’t...it wasn’t unwelcome. Not that I asked him to, but I didn’t push him away, and I don’t mean because I was horrified or something. I just mean,” Neil starts again, taking a breath, “I mean, we...kissed.”

Aaron thinks he knows what Neil felt when he said  _ nope _ . It is the same feeling that makes Aaron turn around and walk back to the kitchen. This time, he hears Neil chasing him back into the room. “Wait, Aaron—”

Aaron laughs. The sound bubbles up from his chest and pours from his lips in a way he can’t quite control.  _ Am I going crazy? Is the world? Both? _ The sandwiches on the counter look alien. Aaron reaches for the mustard and starts painting the cheese with it before he realizes it isn’t the right order. It’s supposed to be turkey next.

“Aaron,” Neil repeats, pleading. “Are you angry?”

“What? No.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Look at me.”

Aaron turns on his heel, ketchup bottle in hand, and says, “I’m not.”

The ketchup bottle makes a popping sound and a stream of red hits Neil in the arm. Neil looks down at it slowly and then looks back at Aaron. “Are you sure?”

Aaron makes an irritated noise and shoves the bottle onto the counter.  _ This is stupid,  _ he thinks.  _ This is stupid, we’re not in high school. This is stupid. _ It doesn’t change anything.

There’s never been a reason to wonder what would happen if Andrew dated someone. Andrew has been with someone before and it was nothing like dating—and anyway, Aaron doesn’t even think about when Andrew is with someone.  _ With someone. _

It’s never crossed Aaron’s mind that Neil might date someone, or have a fling. Despite all the comments about Neil being Aaron’s sex robot,  _ which is absolutely disgusting, _ Aaron has never thought of Neil as a being capable of being with someone. It’s not that Neil lacks emotion. It’s not that he doesn’t recognize attractiveness. It’s just that it’s Neil.  _ Neil. _

Aaron has to unglue his teeth to ask, “Do I want to know...if…”

“No,” Neil says immediately, the  _ o  _ rounded drawn-out. Neil laughs and it sounds as manic as Aaron feels. “Jesus. No. No, what—what? What? In a house full of—?”

“You’d do it if the house were empty?” Aaron immediately blurts, incredulous.

“Wh—that wasn’t your question!”

“It is now!”

The kitchen door squeaks. Aaron turns, eyes wide, and finds Seth casually going to one of the cabinets. He pulls out a pop-tart before he catches Aaron’s eye and silent demand to leave. Seth’s face scrunches as he looks between Neil and Aaron, unimpressed.

“Get out,” Aaron finally says, disbelieving.  _ What the fuck is happening? _

Seth bites into his pop tart and ruminates on his choice of glasses. He picks one and goes to the fridge for the pineapple-orange juice. The sound of the juice filling the glass makes Aaron want to die.

When Seth is done, he raises his glass and walks backward to the kitchen door. “Cheers,” he says, mouth twisting into a wicked grin. He winks. “Later.”

Neil turns slowly to look at Aaron. “Speaking of, I have a question.”

“No.” Aaron points at Neil. “Fuck. Seriously? No.”

“Well, clearly our romantic understanding of one another is severely flawed.”

“Speak for yourself. Do you not think I have any class?”

“Do you?”

“It... _ Andrew, _ ” Aaron says, unable to come up with anything else.

“Well, he’s  _ your  _ brother.”

“Yeah, but you stuck your tongue in his throat.” Aaron shudders as soon as the words leave his mouth.  _ I need a bath. _

“I didn’t say that. Why did you say that?” Neil covers his face with his hands. He looks red.

“Oh, God. You did, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t say it!”

The door swings open again. This time, Neil and Aaron both turn and shout, “Get out!”

Allison holds her hands up, eyebrows arched. “Damn. Get a room. This is the kitchen.”

Neil squints at Aaron and slaps one of the over-mustarded sandwiches together, beckoning with his free hand as he leaves the kitchen again. Allison holds the door open, one hand on her hip as she waits for Aaron to take his sandwich and go.

Aaron half expects Andrew to be in the gym room like it’s some kind of intervention. Instead, the room is empty and too bright, fluorescent lights burning overhead. Neil thumps onto the ground in a way that sounds uncomfortable, legs awkwardly thrown out across the ground as he slumps against the wall.

Neil takes a bite of his sandwich and chews, expression still stormy as he eats. It takes him a few bites to get up the energy to talk again. “I didn’t plan on doing it.”

“You don’t usually plan.”

“Unfair.” Neil scowls. “Like I said, he…”

“What? Made the first move?” Aaron shudders. “I don’t want to think about it.”

“Why? Is it that bad? Am I—”

“It’s not you. I’ve...seen Andrew be with people. Andrew isn’t a people person. This isn’t...I don’t know. It’s…”

_ Not going to last,  _ Aaron doesn’t say.  _ A kind of relationship you don’t want to have. _

But he doesn’t know.  _ Do I? _ Aaron has no clue if Neil wants what Andrew does. Apparently, a kiss is perfectly fine by Neil.

“What do you mean?” Neil asks patiently.

“I mean, he’s not a walk in the park kind of guy.”

“No shit.”

“More than that,” Aaron insists. “I mean, he’s not going to make this a relationship. He doesn’t  _ do _ relationships.”

“What, and I do?”

Aaron clamps his mouth shut. Nothing sounds right coming out of his mouth anymore and he doesn’t know how to explain. This is different from talking about Neil’s impending death or Kevin running him through too many simulations. This is darker. This feels like if Aaron says the wrong thing, they could be turned against each other for the rest of time. Like if Aaron can’t find a way to explain, he’ll say something wrong and lose Neil.

“I want you to be happy,” Aaron says. It’s all he knows. “And I don’t know if Andrew is ready for that.”

“Then help him,” Neil says suddenly, pushing himself off the floor. “Talk to him. Just—”

“Neil, what we did isn’t an easy fix.”

“I know. I know that, but I’m telling you to talk to him anyway. Just...be there. Be with him. Be his brother.”

Coming from anyone else, it would feel like a low blow.  _ Be his brother.  _ But Neil knows Aaron and he knows what the word  _ brother  _ means to him. Neil is fully aware of the old wounds, scars beneath the surface that never fully explain the trauma and broken promises beneath. Neil is the only person that can know without knowing and see the reality behind all the traded insults and broken trust.

Neil knows why Aaron left, even if he doesn’t know why. So he says  _ be his brother _ , and Aaron listens.

“Okay. Fine.”

♅

There’s more than one way to fail someone. Neil knows this in more detail and with more certainty than he can explain.

There are ways for fathers to fail sons. There is emotional abuse, physical abuse, neglect. There are ugly words and unthinking damage dealt by saying things that never leave you. There are ways for mothers to fail their children, either by silence or by anger. By their love or their lack of it.

Siblings can fail one another, spite and jealousy twisting bonds into ropes and chains that bite skin and gnaw away more with each passing year. Friends can fail one another. They can break promises and look the other way.

Lovers. Lovers can fail one another in dirty, ugly ways that break hearts and shatter the soul. Lovers can cheat, lie, steal. They can pretend.

The worst way a lover can fail, Neil thinks, is by becoming another person when they are loved. By changing so much and being so awful that they hurt the one that loves them.

This was never going to be Neil’s fate. His problem. He had no one to fail. He was an island of his own, separate from any one person, and he could move through life without thinking about failure.

Now, it’s all he thinks about.

Neil thinks about how he could fail the Foxes. He could die before his chance to hack the system, or he could fail at hacking it and cause the deaths of everyone he cares about. There are so many ways he could fail.  _ Brother, friend, lover. _

The spare moments when Neil doesn’t think about failing come when he’s with Andrew. It blindsides him, from one kiss to the next until he’s forgetting what it was like before he had Andrew. Before someone was there to hold his wrists, keep him in place, make him forget and remember all at the same time.

Now, Andrew has Neil cornered in a bar a few blocks away from the Foxhole. It’s a safe place according to Andrew and everyone managed to sneak out at midnight, avoiding the front door and Wymack. Neil has a suspicion that Wymack knows about the outing. Not that it matters; it’s so close and so crowded that Neil doubts even the best NEST bot could track them without enough time to escape.

Neil doesn’t pay attention to the strobing lights or the thump of music. He couldn’t place the song anyway since it sounds nothing like what Aaron likes to listen to on their radio at home. This is different, impulsive, waiting. It sounds like bated breath. It feels like it too, humming in Neil’s chest as he becomes hyper aware of Andrew’s fingers curled around his wrists.

It looks like Andrew is trying not to look at Neil. His eyes are somewhere around Neil’s ear, hazy and unfocused. They are crowded close together because there is standing room only and the dance floor is inches away. Neil feels like every breath he takes is swallowed by Andrew, recycled into the air between them with intimate heat.

Neil thinks he should ask something but he doesn’t know what. He desperately wants—that is a new thing, too, the wanting—but he knows better than to act. Andrew sets their pace. He has told Neil  _ don’t touch unless I tell you  _ and  _ watch yourself _ , warnings that should turn Neil away but never have. What they are is not what Andrew won’t do. It is what he does.

Andrew’s hand inches up Neil’s arm. His fingers seem to twitch as if he is trying to pull himself away. Everything that is happening now is more, closer to the surface, different. Andrew doesn’t allow himself to slip like this, ever. Something is different. Maybe it’s the anonymity of neon and loud music or maybe it’s the dozens of other strangers pulling at one another on the dance floor.

Neil wants to say something but it’s too loud to hear. He can only blink and wait, desperately praying to gods he doesn’t know or believe in to help him. Andrew leans close, head tucked just between Neil’s neck and shoulder. Neil can feel his breath stutter there. Neil’s hands clench uselessly at his sides and he wishes there were something, anything for him to hold so he could steady himself.

Andrew’s breath is hot in Neil’s ear. The words are almost lost in the music but Neil clings to them desperately. “Face,” Andrew says. That’s all.

Andrew turns his head. His mouth wanders across the side of Neil’s face, breath humid and soft on Neil’s skin. It’s not a purposeful tease. Andrew moves like a magnet drawn closer, trying but failing to resist the pull.

Neil’s eyes flicker shut. He turns his head, impatient, and kisses Andrew. It’s brief for a second, then hot when Andrew opens his mouth and Neil hungrily chases the taste of his tongue.  _ Face,  _ Neil thinks, and then he forgets to think because his hands rest on Andrew’s face and it feels like he is holding something both incredibly massive and dangerously fragile. He is holding everything in his hands, holding them together, holding whatever this is and hoping it won’t break.

If he had a choice, Neil would spend the rest of his numbered days kissing Andrew.

Somewhere in the timeless moment of skin pressed together and lips hot as fire, Neil feels someone brush past him. He almost ignores it, uncaring, but something prickles along his spine.

The intrusion is sudden. There is no time to fight it, barely enough time to recognize it. Neil freezes for a moment because he has a sudden, blinding image of a man standing before him with mismatched eyes, one greenish and one blue.

**_You may have left, but it will never leave you._ **

It’s funny how quickly Neil feels himself begin to shut down. Andrew has already pulled away, focused on some argument Nicky is having upstairs. He hasn’t noticed what happened yet.

Neil wants to laugh.  _ How can it be going my way even now? _

_ How can it be possible for me to hide from him when I’m the most exposed I’ve ever been? _

Andrew’s brow furrows in annoyance. “If we have to leave early, I won’t be happy.”

“Check on him,” Neil offers. He sounds far away to himself, like he’s speaking through one of those ancient cup telephones, a tenuous string connecting him to reality and his own body.

“He can take care of himself.”

“If he’s drunk, Kevin is definitely drunk.”

Andrew’s eyes narrow. He looks like he’s imagining the best way to fillet his cousin and friend. “Don’t move.”

Neil doesn’t answer. He can’t. If he does, he has to be true to his word, and he can’t do that. Not when there is a message in his brain and a warning reverberating in his bones.

Diving is not easy. Sometimes Nicky jokingly asks  _ can you find my old school records  _ and Neil has to stop and realize that some people don’t understand what diving is, that it’s not some magic search engine you can just access at any given time. Diving isn’t even the same between different people. To Neil, it is a series of doors.

But that’s just because Neil and doors have a history.

When Neil lowers his eyelids and sinks into himself, he already knows what he will have to do. He knows it will be bad and knows he should wait, but there’s no time. Not if there is something waiting for him. Someone.

Neil chokes on water, drowns violently in an attempt to reach the bottom faster. When he is submerged, he drags himself through twisted wire and thorns to reach the door that hides at the very edges of his mind. He has to climb over rocks, his palms torn on sharp edges and his blood wetting the stone as he struggles toward the one place he struggled to escape.

The door here is simple. Innocuous. The wood of it is cracked in some places, thin slivers of light shining through. The paint on the door is dingy white and spotted with stains. Where the paint is chipped and worn, there is red beneath it. It smells like copper and mold.

_ I don’t want to. _

The voice is childish and small. Neil hates it, hates the way it echoes and creeps into the corner of his mind. It is weak.  _ I’m weak. But that’s why I run. _

_ Why I ran. _

Neil closes his hand on the doorknob. It is rough under his palm, bleached and cracked bone. He wants to pull away and run. He wants to vomit. Neil twists the knob and presses further, heart thudding its way up to his throat.

Damp air greets Neil when the door opens. He steps quietly into the darkness; his eyes can’t adjust to the black, slow to react and painfully human. Neil walks and expects every step to lead him right into his own shallow grave. Pipes creak overhead and something—water, maybe—drips steadily onto the concrete beneath his feet.

There is a dim light in the distance. Neil walks to it and clenches his fists as he goes, nails biting into his palms.  _ He can’t be here. He can’t. _

A shadow moves in a corner of the room. Neil fights the urge to run and watches it, desperate to find a shape. It doesn’t look like the right size and he doesn’t recognize whoever it is.

He doesn’t recognize the shadow until the woman steps out of the darkness, her smile full of teeth and cutting.  **_“Hey there, junior.”_ **

“You are not allowed here,” Neil says. He doesn’t know if it’s even true but he has to believe it. It can’t be real. Not if he wants to make it out alive.

**_“You tell yourself that, but you don’t believe it,”_ ** Lola says. She tilts her head.  **_“You know I’m part of you.”_ **

“You are not.”

**_“I am. I am, junior, I am. You can’t make it not true.”_ **

Neil lashes out. It is an impulsive move, his arm flying in an arc toward Lola. He knows it won’t hit her; she’s not real. Still, he cuts through the air and watches Lola smile. “You aren’t even real.”

**_“Oh, I’m real. In here. Out there. You know that.”_ ** Lola reaches out, her hand curled into a claw. Her nails press against Neil’s chest and she scrapes, fingers clenching.  **_“You feel it. Don’t you?”_ **

“All I feel is pity,” Neil replies lowly. “You’re sad, Lola. You’re a sad piece of shit.”

Lola’s hand digs in. Neil can feel a sting and then he forces himself to not pay attention.  _ It’s not real. You know it.  _ It is just his mind and memories making this Lola. She is nothing but shadow to him.

**_“Did you know?”_ ** Lola leans in, her mouth curved in a sharp smile.  **_“Dust to dust. Father to son. He’s coming, junior.”_ **

Neil turns. He doesn’t think. He starts to run and the doorway in the distance seems further with every step, the light fading and flickering around him as the smell of copper thickens. Lola laughs and Neil fights to move faster, faster than he can in this place.

**_“I’m coming.”_ **

He can hear it first. Neil hears it rushing and then a wave hits him, breaking at his ankles. It is warm and liquid, sticky on his skin. Blood. The air in Neil’s lungs is thin. His heart kicks against his ribs and Neil pushes himself, pushes the door open. He rips himself from the dive, uncaring of how fried his system will be at the sudden jolt.

Neil comes back to his body just as a familiar face floats into his line of vision. There are mismatched eyes looking back at him.

“You are going to die.”

♅

“Nicky’s not even that drunk.” Aaron leans against the banister of the balcony overlooking the dance floor. He’s been trying to avoid looking at the corner where Andrew and Neil have been hiding. He’d rather not watch them make out.

Kevin downs the shot in his hand. His tongue slides against the corner of his mouth to catch sugar or salt—it’s always a toss-up between the two—and Aaron has to look away. “Maybe. But it’s Andrew.”

“Yeah. So he’s coming for you, next.”

“Wonder what he’ll say when he notices I’m not trashed.”

It’s uncharacteristically open criticism. Aaron looks at Kevin, squinting. “Aren’t you?”

“Clearly not.” Kevin grunts in annoyance, as if the choice isn’t his. “As much as I want to be.”

“You’re not trying to go sober,” Aaron says, disquieted. The thought of a sober Kevin is something he can’t begin to wrap his brain around.

_ But I guess I thought that about Seth, too. _

Kevin leans over the balcony railing alongside Aaron. “I want to have Jean with me. After he’s out.”

_ Oh, that’s a monumentally stupid idea.  _ Aaron doesn’t say as much but Kevin glances over and he must see it. He must be able to tell from Aaron’s face what he’s thinking. Kevin smiles wryly and idly licks the rim of his shot glass.

“I know. I’m not going to. That’s why I called Jeremy.”

“Leave the dishwashing to the bartender,” Aaron says, annoyed. He snatches the shot glass from Kevin and blindly pushes it onto a nearby table.

Kevin stares for a beat too long. Aaron almost snaps his fingers to break the strange trance but Kevin comes out of it himself, worrying absentmindedly at his lower lip. “Jeremy will be good for him. They’ll both be good together.”

“Yeah? What about you?”

_ I don’t mean that. I didn’t mean to say that.  _ But it’s out now and Aaron can’t take the words back into his mouth and swallow them. He can only stand in mortified silence as Kevin processes what Aaron said.

Kevin’s eyes seem to focus. He looks serious, out of nowhere, and Aaron is struck by just how much he looks like his old posters. The Kevin that was unblemished and cool, beautifully handsome face staring over the city against a white background.

“Something’s up with Neil. He’s diving.”

Kevin is halfway down the stairs before Aaron can get his feet to move. He follows quickly, heart pounding with each step he takes.  _ Diving? What the fuck for? _ Neil hates diving and it’s hard enough for him to protect himself when it’s just them at home. In a crowd full of people, Neil is an easy target.

“Hey!” Kevin is shouting. He’s loud when he wants to be. Aaron tries to duck around him to see what’s happening and the second he does, he sees a stranger standing by Neil. A stranger with  a familiar implant on the back of his neck.

Aaron shoves harder at the crowd pressing against him. “Fuck,” he curses, squeezing past Kevin. “Come on!”

Aaron latches onto the stranger’s arm as soon as he’s close enough. He pulls knowing full well that he isn’t strong enough and the only thing on his side is surprise. The stranger doesn’t budge.

“Go,” the stranger says. Aaron doesn’t know who he’s talking to.

Kevin is there suddenly and Aaron has never been so grateful for his height and strength. It’s simple for Kevin to pull back the stranger and situate himself in front of Neil. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I don’t—”

“Wrong answer,” Andrew growls. He appears from nowhere and yanks at the stranger’s arm, pulling him toward a side door. The stranger blinks and Aaron catches the look on his face for a second. It looks like complete shock and confusion.

_ Why? _

Kevin pulls Neil along. Aaron wants to say  _ wait, we need to get him out of here,  _ but he’s too far behind the others. They tumble into the alley after Andrew, whose augmentations are glowing beneath his skin. He has one hand on the stranger’s arm and the other reaching for his neck.

“Andrew! Wait—” Aaron yells, barely avoiding a tumble down the steps. He catches himself with Kevin’s arm, reassured by the presence of a solid body. Neil still looks ghostly, out of himself.

Andrew’s voice is low and dangerous. “Why don’t you introduce yourself, stranger? I am so very interested to know everything about you.”

“Let me go.”

“What a strange name.”

The stranger sighs. He twists in Andrew’s grip in a way that tells Aaron he isn’t being pulled anywhere. He is allowing Andrew to guide him like a dog on a leash.  _ Andrew won’t like that. _

“Let me go. I—”

“Wrong answer.” Andrew must have noticed; he sounds angry. He pulls the man down by his arm and says, this time barely audible, “One last chance. I promise you that’s it.”

“Don’t,” Neil says softly. Aaron turns to look at him, fully expecting Neil to finally come to his senses and snap Andrew out of it. Instead, he follows Neil’s gaze right to the stranger. “Dietrich.”

_ Dietrich.  _ It is hazily familiar. Aaron tries to think and looks at Dietrich’s eyes, mismatched blue and green. He tries to think of the only things Neil has ever told him about before they met each other.  _ Who is this? _

Dietrich shakes his head. He pulls away from Andrew easily, but that is probably because Andrew has already loosened his grip. “This is not my choice, Nathaniel.”

There is a stretch of silence. Aaron expects Andrew to say something, or maybe Neil. He expects an answer or an apology. Any kind of explanation. What he gets is Kevin taking a step back, face draining of color as he stares at Neil.

“Nathaniel?”

Neil stares at Kevin. He looks too distant to say anything or react. Aaron wants to rewind just a few minutes and set the world back on track. He wants an answer. He wants anything to help him regain footing when the world feels like it’s an ocean during a storm.

Kevin shakes his head once, dazed. “You’re—”

“Running,” Dietrich interrupts quietly. It doesn’t sound like an accusation. It comes out like the end to a story, a myth passed down in spoken words.

_ Nathaniel is running. _

Neil steps closer to Dietrich. “I am not Nathaniel. If you touch my friends—”

Dietrich’s expression changes. It’s a painful thing to witness and Aaron wonders if it’s possible to hear a heart break. He knows with sudden certainty that they were friends, once.  _ Friends like we are. _ “I’m not here to hurt you,” Dietrich says quietly. “I came to warn you. To help.”

“We’ve had help,” Kevin says shakily before Andrew can stop him. “They’re dead now.”

“Helpful of them.”

“Shut up,” Andrew says. His expression is shuttered and Aaron knows he is going to speak with Neil about this. About Nathaniel. “You have no right to know us.”

Dietrich looks at Neil. His eyes say  _ I do _ but his mouth says, “If you don’t want me, I’ll go. But you know where I’ll be.”

Aaron watches Dietrich go and feels words in his mouth that come from nowhere.  _ Don’t.  _ He feels it, somewhere in his chest—he feels the heavy knowledge that this person knows Neil and they were close, once. It might be fear that makes him want to say  _ stay _ , fear of the future and fear of the inevitable.

_ You don’t have much time,  _ Aaron wants to say.  _ He’s dying. _

Aaron can’t. He can’t say anything so he doesn’t, instead waiting as Neil gathers himself and retreats into the silence Aaron hates so much.

“I guess that’s it, then,” Andrew says, deceptively calm.

_ I guess so. _

♅

Seth is fully aware that Riko is alive. It’s not Riko’s death that haunts him.

The thing that haunts him, the thing that keeps him tossing at night, is the knowledge that he didn’t do enough to save him. He couldn’t help him.

_ He trusted me to save him, and to stop him if it was impossible. I couldn’t do either. _

Riko reminded Seth of Neil. When Seth first met Neil, he was a patched-together mess trailing after Aaron at the scene of a car accident. Seth had looked at Neil and his first thought was  _ something is broken in there and no one can fix it. _ He thought that and then months later, as Aaron visited and Seth stopped by for tek, he saw that he was wrong. Seth saw Neil mend, even if only a little, and he knew that he was wrong.  _ Broken is not gone. _

So when Riko showed up with his anger and his sharp edges, Seth saw Neil. He saw Neil and he saw himself. Seth saw himself at the Foxhole years ago, angry and addicted and looking for anything to forget. He wanted to forget the horror and forget his own part in it. He wanted to forget the cruel words and heavy hands that raised him even while he used his own words and hands to break everything around him.

_ Stuck in a loop.  _ It was easy to see a way out from the outside. It was harder to take the step when you knew nothing else.

Neil is falling apart now, too. The little fissures are reappearing on the surface alongside his scars. The blue light of tek and magic seems to emanate more from him these days. Seth can’t look and see a happy ending but he forces himself to look anyway and finds Neil on the back porch, legs crossed and forehead resting against a wooden beam.

“How’s the melancholic reflection?”

“That’s a big word for a police officer.”

Seth laughs quietly. “I don’t think I am anymore. I never really was.”

Neil’s head turns slightly. “Did they fire you?”

“Neil, I haven’t been to work since Riko showed up on my doorstep. Yeah, I think I’m fired.”

“Good.” Neil smiles crookedly. His teasing is weak, but it’s not gone.  _ Not yet. _ “I hate the police anyway.”

“You and me both.”

Neil shuts his eyes. He is frighteningly like Andrew when he’s like this, fading into the world around him like he is insubstantial. It doesn’t make sense. Neil is one of the most concrete people Seth knows. Neil is a rock in the ocean, persistent despite the waves and storms he weathers. Anyone else would be dead by now.

It’s not a compliment. All it really means is that Neil is thinned out. At risk. Seth presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. “What happened? At—”

“Who told you?”

“Aaron.”

Neil squints a little. Through the haze of utter exhaustion, Seth thinks he can see confusion. “Really? Hm.”

“What? We talk.”

“Yeah. He talks to Kevin, too.”

_ Now I’m confused.  _ “Sure?”

“Nothing.” Neil scoots around to face Seth. “I don’t know why he said anything. It wasn’t important.”

Seth raises an eyebrow. “Some guy shows up calling you by another name and offering help because you’re in danger, but that’s not important. Sorry. Guess we all fucking overreacted.”

Neil’s mouth hangs open. He looks vaguely guilty, which is nice, because Seth has the idea that Neil probably thinks he’s doing the right thing. Which he is not.

Finally, Neil shrugs. “I just...I’m not Nathaniel. I’m not.”

“Fine. We’re not talking about your name,” Seth replies, incredulous. “We’re talking about some dude no one knows being able to track you down and warn you.”

Neil’s eyebrows hitch up. Seth thinks  _ please no _ and then Neil’s hand raises to press against his mouth.  _ Fuck damn it. _

“You’re shitting me,” Seth says shortly. “You didn’t think about how he found you?”

“I mean—I was a little more shocked that he was still alive—”

“Oh, that’s fucking comforting.”

“I would know if I was that easy to track,” Neil replies sharply, finally stirring enough to seem like a whole human. “Give me some fucking credit.”

“Sure, when you stop being a dumbass. I seriously thought you were smarter than this.”

“Maybe I would be if my supposedly-dead friend didn’t show up in front of me and say I’m going to die!”

_ There it is. _

Seth only feels distantly guilty about prodding Neil. He knows how stubborn Neil is—he blames Aaron for that—and he also knows that Neil likes to bicker, even if he’ll never admit it. Neil houses the processing power of a supercomputer and all that power does nothing but run in self-destructive circles unless he has something to focus on. Something like being snarky.

“Why did you think he was dead?”

Neil narrows his eyes at Seth, sullen. He is aware of what Seth did and is doing, but apparently his desire to talk through it outweighs his annoyance at being found out. “He came from the same place I ran from. We were both trapped. The person we were running from? He worked under NEST.”

“Oh. Cute.” If this conversation had happened when Seth was first at the Foxhole, he thinks now would be the moment he’d punch Neil. Now would be the moment he let his anger and disbelief out through his fists.  _ Come on. Do better, Seth.  _ “So when were you going to tell us that you also have a history with NEST?”

“I don’t,” Neil replies, firm. “I was never theirs. I knew about them, sure—but they were a passing thing to me. I was somewhere else.”

“And how does this help? If you have someone else after you, why wouldn’t you say so?”

“Because it didn’t matter. The man who was after me is supposed to be locked up.”

“Supposed to.”

Neil presses his lips together. He looks away, out past the lawn and toward the trees. “I already told Andrew about this.”

“Oh, I’m real sorry I missed that.” Seth laughs. There is nothing funny about it.

“Yeah, I’m sure you are.”

“What did he say? I bet he was pissed. He likes to know who he’s fighting when he promises to fight for you.”

“He’s not fighting for me,” Neil says quietly. “Not anymore.”

They’re veering into dangerously personal territory. Seth has the distant thought that he should stop now, or at least figure out a way to shift their conversation back to what matters.  _ This entire fucking house is a comedy of errors, except it’s not funny. It’s just fucking tragic. _

Seth sighs. “He’s not going to dump you.”

“What?”

“He’s not going to dump you.” Seth shrugs, wishing he didn’t have to say this.  _ Why me? Why not Aaron?  _ “I’ve seen him with someone else. We all have. It’s not the same.”

“What, I’m special?” Neil’s mouth twists into a harsh smile.

“No. You’re a nightmare,” Seth says, dry. “You bicker with him, you get into trouble, you throw yourself into every problem you encounter. You don’t know how to keep your hair under control or your wardrobe. You are exactly the kind of disaster that Andrew can’t help drooling over.”

Neil looks horrified when he stares back at Seth. His face is also red. “Can I pay you to stop talking or do I have to knock you out?”

Seth ignores the threat. “Anyway, if you weren’t already running around in hot shorts, your persistence would get to him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Andrew is kind of at home with chaos. You’re exactly what he looks for in life.”

“Please stop.” Neil has his face in his hands. “I beg of you.”

“Nah.” Seth smiles. He can’t help it. Once upon a time, he knew Andrew when Andrew was all drugs and no reality. When Andrew looked like he was one ray of sunshine away from dissipating like mist.  _ Now he’s routinely grinding up against Neil in clubs that aren’t as busy as he thinks. _

Neil pulls his knees up to his chest and leans against his thighs, chin resting on his knees. With his arms around his legs and his sweater a clearly oversized belonging of Kevin’s, he looks at home.  _ Home, here. _

“I didn’t mean to stay this long.”

“Neither did I.”

Neil tilts his head, evaluating Seth. “You never really explained why you came here. Or why you left.”

“I came here because Wymack dragged me. And I met Allison,” Seth admits. Her name doesn’t taste as bitter on his tongue anymore. He doesn’t feel as bad about mentioning her as he used to.

“You met her because of Wymack?”

“Yeah. She came with him to convince me, I guess. Or maybe just for fun.”

“Was she why you came?”

Seth snorts. “I thought so at the time. She was interesting and I could tell she was kind of like me. I had the stupid thought…”

_ We had the same sharp edges.  _ Seth doesn’t finish his thought. He doesn’t add that he saw someone that might actually know him, care about him aside from his strength and his skill. He thought Allison could care about him and he could care about her. All they ended up being was a distraction to one another and a bad choice.

“We didn’t ever do anything useful for one another but teach ourselves what not to do,” Seth says quietly. “And I never did anything good for her except leaving.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Neil says. “It doesn’t suit you.”

Seth laughs. “You’re right. That’s your job, right? It’s why you and Andrew work.”

“I liked it better when you were talking about your failed relationship.”

“Well, tough luck. I’d like to talk about something going right for once.”

Neil bites at his lip. “Are we? Going right? Can I actually be…”

“Can you be a good thing?” Seth tilts his head to look up at the sky.  _ Can any of us?  _ “You are. For him. He even let me sit next to him at dinner yesterday, you know.”

“It’s a miracle.” Neil smiles wryly. “But I hate to tell you, it’s just because he was—”

“I don’t need to know what you’re doing under the table,” Seth says loudly, pretending to complain as he stands. “Keep it to yourself, all right, troublemaker?”

“Sure.” Neil looks down at his hands and flexes his fingers, bluish light pulsing softly. “Thank you.”

_ I don’t actually remember the last time someone said that to me. _

“Yeah. Don’t stay out here too late. Andrew will start looking for you.”

“He knows where I am.” Neil smiles as Seth walks inside. Seth nearly misses it when Neil adds, “He always does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone  
> i decided to commit pesticide and do nanowrimo so no more updates until november is over or my will cracks k? love u all


	14. knowing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin does something very, very stupid. Neil tries to live his last day with the Foxes in peace.

It’s probably not the smartest idea Kevin has ever had to sneak out of the Foxhole alone. He feels delinquent and also completely lost; considering he’s never snuck out of anywhere, he half expects every footstep to land on a creaky stair.

Kevin doesn’t exactly believe that Andrew has some kind of preternatural sense that tells him when bullshit is happening—and specifically happening with Kevin—but it’s hard not to have some superstitious faith when Andrew is always there at just the right time. Kevin keeps expecting to bump into him somewhere, pale hair mussed from sleep and mouth a flat, unamused line. _I was in bed,_ he would say. _Why have you made me leave my bed, Kevin?_

Except these days, it’s more likely to be Neil’s bed.

Thankfully, Andrew is probably asleep or occupied, and maybe whatever system he has to warn him about Kevin’s whereabouts isn’t loud enough to catch his attention. Kevin manages to sneak out without problem and then he zips his jacket up all the way to his neck, slinking through the dark parts of town as he makes his way to the club.

Typically, a night excursion to the club would mean a collapsing mental state and impending blackout drunkenness while Andrew shadowed Kevin’s every step. But Kevin is secretly three days sober, and he’s not looking to go dark. Not tonight. Tonight, he’s looking for someone.

It’s busy as usual. Kevin passes the bar and a chance to take the edge off; instead, he tries to remember what the person he’s looking for looks like. He tries to remember what the person said, what they meant, where they were.

Kevin tries to figure it out until a voice issues from beside him, impossibly easy to hear despite the din of the crowd. “You do a bad job of being covert.”

It takes a lot for Kevin to stop himself from jumping out of his skin. His body is screaming at him to run or fight but he slowly turns, forcing himself to remain calm.

It’s him. The man looks close to Kevin’s age, perhaps three or four years older. He has a sturdy frame, though not as stocky as Andrew, and he is only slightly shorter than Kevin. His eyes are mismatched. One is piercing blue and the other is greenish and soft. He has blond hair darker than the twins’ and freckles that are more brown than Neil’s. For some reason, the feature that stands out to Kevin is the definition of the man’s upper lip. It makes him look soft, despite the faint scars Kevin can see near the man’s neck.

 _Wait, focus._ Kevin glances behind the man, looking for any sign of accomplices. “That was fast. Can you track us?”

“‘Us?’” The man echoes. He sounds almost amused. He has an accent, too—maybe German, though Kevin can’t quite place it. It’s unexpectedly soft, just like most things about him. “You mean your foxes.”

 _They’re not mine._ They never really were, and Kevin has felt that even more acutely since Neil appeared. “I want to know how you know Neil,” Kevin says brusquely. “And how you know the name Nathaniel, and why you—”

“Slow down.” The man smiles. The bastard was smiling, the sharp bow of his upper lip flattened. Despite the tired lines around his eyes, he looks pleased. “What first?”

Kevin presses his lips together. He isn’t a fan of being interrupted. “How do you know him?”

“We grew up together, if you could call it that.”

“I don’t call it anything. Be clear.”

The man’s eyebrows bunch questioningly. He tilts his head and evaluates Kevin before beckoning him away from the crowd by the bar. Kevin glances toward the door and estimates how much time it’ll take him to run for it. He decides it’s worth the risk, even if this stranger looks stronger than him. Whoever this man is, he’s the closest thing to Andrew that Kevin has ever seen, without the height deficiency.

“I grew up with him,” the man repeats, once they’re in a quieter spot. “I am older than him. I did my best to protect him, or at least teach him how to survive.”

“You called him Nathaniel.”

_Do you know what that name means?_

The man nods, the humor in his eyes dissipating. “Yes. That’s his name. The one he was given.”

Kevin’s hand reflexively curls around the edge of the stool he is standing next to. The world tilts a little and it feels as off-kilter as he does. He can’t breathe for a moment and he has to count the passing seconds until the ringing in his ears goes away.

“What do you mean,” Kevin chokes, but he already knows the answer. He can see it in the man’s face. “What do you mean, Nathaniel?”

“I think you know.” The man turns away to look at the people crowded on the dance floor. “He has NEST tech in him. He’s a newer model than you, technically.”

“No.”

“A test run of sorts, I suppose. His father paid a pretty penny. I’m surprised none of you put it together before. He’s clearly not just—”

 _“No,”_ Kevin repeats. It’s the only word he can form; his tongue feels like a lead weight in his mouth and his ears are starting to ring again. He wants to run from the club, run back home, turn back time and stop himself from leaving in the first place.

A NEST test model. Something newer than Kevin. He’d heard the name when he was with Riko, floating through the hallways as they were dragged to performance tests. _Nathaniel._ They would talk about specifications, guess at how he would fit into Riko and Kevin’s existing dynamic. They wanted a trinity.

Something changed that. Something threw Neil out of the loop and instead, Jean was chosen. _But it should’ve been him,_ Kevin realized, horrified. _It was supposed to be him._

Riko was the perfect blend of human and robot. Kevin was human, though his augmentations were the most seamless in history. _And they wanted to add a robot. Neil._ NEST had wanted to make the perfect team, three levels of inhuman, and they wanted to see how they worked together. They wanted to understand and achieve the next generation of tekno-magic.

Kevin shakes his head. “What happened?” he whispers. “What happened to him?”

“He tried to run. He was broken,” the man says simply. His mismatched eyes feel heavy on Kevin’s skin. “He was taken apart and left for dead, for what he did. Fortunately for you, he’s stubborn.”

 _Aaron._ “Aaron found him,” Kevin says quietly. He almost laughs. Aaron left the foxes and ran straight into what he wanted to leave behind. “He’s the one that was _fortunate._ ”

“Well, he’s lucky he didn’t find him when Nathan was there.”

 _Nathan._ Kevin does laugh this time, a hollow sound that crumbles after a few seconds. “Of course. The Butcher.”

 _He scraps the failures,_ Riko once told Kevin. He was standing over Kevin on the test floor and his black eyes were still pulsing with the remnants of magic. _Don’t be a failure._

“The Butcher paid a price to make his son powerful. He meant to challenge NEST, probably. Imagine that. A chop shop and mechanic taking over the empire of Moriyama.”

“They made an investment,” Kevin says, hollow. “They would have come to collect.”

The man hums in agreement. “They did. They took the Butcher’s son to the Castle, but his mother made a choice. She took him and she ran, and that was the worst thing she could have done.”

Kevin closes his eyes. He tries to imagine Neil, young but full of knowledge implanted artificially, calculating risks and numbers and wondering why his mother chose to run. _Were the emotions there, even then? Or did he learn to mimic those?_

“You don’t deserve him,” the man replies. He says it so casually that Kevin almost misses the venom in the statement. “You didn’t even see. You didn’t care.”

Kevin doesn’t budge. It stings, but he doesn’t care. He’s had worse pain. He looks the man in the eye and says, “We’ve been running for our lives from the beginning. We know the look.”

_It wouldn’t have made a difference._

The man shifts again, this time reaching out to Kevin. He pauses long enough for Kevin to move but for some reason, Kevin doesn’t care to. He feels no threat when the man rests a hand on the left side of his jaw. His hand feels rougher than Kevin expected it to, though it’s warm.

“Beautiful,” the man says. His blue and green gaze is steady and open when he looks at Kevin. Maybe that’s why Kevin trusts him; there is nothing hiding in his eyes. Only truth. “They could have made an empire of you.”

“They did,” Kevin says, and he thinks of the billboards still standing in the factory district. “But with him? They probably meant to mass-produce.”

For the first time, the man’s eyes flicker with anger. He tilts his head and says, cold and low, “He is not a robot, Kevin. He is human.”

_Of course it was worse. Of course._

The world narrows to a point, one blue and one green eye staring at Kevin as if they can see through him. Kevin can hear every thump of his heart and every breath that passes between his lips. He can hear every comment anyone has made, the joking _sex robot_ from Nicky and every time someone said _it’s a good thing we can just replace that._

_And he’s dying._

The realization hits him square in the chest. Kevin thinks about Neil’s blue eyes and the pain in them when he agreed to do what Kevin wanted. Neil was never meant to last this long. He was never meant to survive beyond what NEST and his father wanted for him.

The man leans in. For the first time, Kevin’s heart thumps and stutters in panic. It’s not fear that floods him, but a peculiar nervousness he can’t place. The man tilts his head, lips brushing Kevin’s cheek and breath hot in his ear.

“They came for him,” the man whispers. “They will take him.”

Kevin doesn’t think. He turns and he runs.

 _Stupid. Stupid, stupid,_ his heart chants with every beat. Kevin doesn’t notice the burn of his muscles or the raw burn in his throat as he runs. His head is swimming with a multitude of thoughts and all of them are _you were wrong._

_Are you going to kill someone else?_

Kevin forgets to be quiet when he throws the door to the foxhole open and lunges inside. It doesn’t really matter anyway; Neil is there, patiently seated on one of the recliners that faces the front door.

“You talked to him.”

Kevin doesn’t know what to say, or how. He tries to breathe in and out, but even that doesn’t do anything. “He told me,” he finally says, voice shaky from running and despair. “He told me, I—”

Neil slides out of his chair. He has a blanket around his shoulders and he looks smaller, weighed down by the quilted patchwork of orange shirts Matt made years ago. _What would he have been like back then? Did he even think he could get out, then?_ Kevin can feel a rock forming in his throat, hard and unmoving.

“Why are you crying?” Neil whispers. He looks confused, worried. Kevin’s hand flies to his face and he feels the tears on his cheeks, hot against his skin. _I am._

Kevin doesn’t know the answer until it unfurls from his tongue. “I know I can’t let you do this. But what else can we do?”

Neil smiles and it hurts more than anything else, any surgery or kick to the ribs that Kevin has experienced. “Yeah,” he agrees softly. “I know.”

Neil leaves Kevin there. He probably has to get back to Andrew, who is probably in Neil’s bed, dead asleep. It’s probably the best sleep Andrew has had in a long time.

_And I can’t tell him. Never._

Because no matter who wins, there is one thing Kevin is almost absolutely sure of. Neil is not going to make it out alive.

♅

Neil is in town with the rest of the Foxes. Maybe he felt something coming, or maybe he just wanted one more breath of fresh air before he left. Whatever the truth is, Neil is the one that convinced Wymack to let them all out together. They don’t  even go very far—just to the market seven blocks away—but it feels like a different world. Here, no one is running for their life. Here, there are no scars or implants, no forceful surgeries or nightmare hacks. It’s just the smell of food and the tiny stalls selling dancing holograms of ballerinas.

 _This could be home._ Neil thinks it and he wants to cry when he thinks it; there has never been such a place for him. He has lived in houses that have digested him while he struggled within. He has never had a home.

Aaron is talking to Kevin. He waves Kevin closer and Neil watches Kevin lean sideways, bending to come closer to Aaron as he talks. Whatever Aaron says makes Kevin snort suddenly, an unexpected laugh paired with a bemused smile. It’s the most vulnerable, true thing Neil has seen from Kevin in some time. He wants to walk over and talk to them, but he also doesn’t want to shatter the crystalline peace they seem to have created.

“They weren’t ever really close before, you know. I think Aaron actually hated Kevin,” Nicky says, joining Neil in observation. Nicky has something sweet-smelling in his hand and he offers it, smiling in the uncomplicated way Neil still doesn’t understand. “Churro?”

“I actually don’t like sweet things all that much,” Neil says. Nicky’s eyebrows raise. _I guess this has never come up._

“Really? What do you like?”

Neil hesitates a beat longer than he means to. “I...don’t know.”

There’s that look in Nicky’s eyes that Neil knows too well by now. It’s mostly sad and also a little angry. He doesn’t like knowing all these little things that very clearly remind him that Neil has never had the chance to like anything. He’s never had the luxury of deciding what he wanted.

Just two nights ago, Kevin looked like this. Except he had just learned Neil was going to die.

Neil leans over and takes a bite of Nicky’s churro. Nicky’s eyes widen and Neil chews slowly, lowering his eyelids as he focuses on the taste. It is doughy but light, and the sugar is brown. There is honey lingering sticky on his lips. “I like this,” he finally says. “I like this.”

Nicky’s smile is slow like sunshine on a rainy day, but it illuminates his face and warms Neil. It’s almost a relief to see it, like it’s proof that maybe the Foxes won’t fall apart once all this is over. They are stronger than everything. They can make it.

Even if Neil can’t.

There is a familiar hand on the back of Neil’s neck. He melts into it immediately, something unraveling within him. He wasn’t aware that he was tense but he must have been, because when Andrew touches him, Neil loosens. His breath leaves him in a sigh and he turns to look at Andrew, who probably only meant to stop for a second. Instead, Andrew lingers, his palm cool on Neil’s skin.

He looks like a cat in the sun. Andrew’s eyes are half-lidded as he lazily inspects Neil, head tilted slightly to the side. “Well?”

“Well.” Neil smiles. He smiles even though things are terrible and he is going to die. He smiles even though he knows this might be the last time he sees Andrew. “Did you find ice cream?”

Andrew’s brow furrows. He looks annoyed that he cares, a slight frown on his lips even as he tugs Neil closer. Neil laughs quietly before his lips meet Andrew’s. It is a simple kiss, brief and as private as it can be in the crowd around them. Neil takes every second of touch that he can before he breaks away, his skin buzzing with warmth.

"Not yet."

"Want me to look?"

"No." Andrew still looks displeased, like he hasn't figured out why Neil is talking to him, even though they've been together for weeks, now. Even though Andrew wakes up in Neil's bed most mornings. Even though Neil hasn't been away from Andrew, really away, since the Moriyama had him after Proust.

Maybe Andrew also thinks it's not real. Just a dream.

Nicky clears his throat and Neil remembers he's there. Apparently, Andrew remembers, too. He gives Nicky a squinty sideye, mouth once again twisted like he is upset he forgot to be secretive.

They're not very secretive anymore, anyway. Especially not since Kevin accidentally found them kissing two mornings ago and violently threw himself out of the room.

"I'm gonna find Allison," Nicky says mildly. "Don't go too far."

Andrew's fingers fidget on Neil's neck. It's the only sign of distress from him; he still has a lazily relaxed look in his eye as he takes in the shops around them.

Neil wishes he were more robot, so he could memorize this perfectly. So he could have a photographic image of Andrew in the sunlight, every small shift in his face a force of nature.  _And I can read him. I can read him like no one else._

It never struck Neil that knowing secrets could be satisfying. They've always been dangerous, painful things for him. The secret of Andrew's happiness is one that Neil never wants to lose.

“We’re leaving soon,” Andrew reminds Neil. He shifts away, finally, and his eyes flick toward the end of the street. “I’ll be back.”

“Okay.”

Neil watches Andrew go. He thinks about how out in the sun, Andrew doesn’t look so pale and washed-out. He is substantial and warm, everything about him honey-gold instead of silver. There’s even color to Andrew’s cheeks. He is a revenant among them.

It’s nice to think that Neil helped with that, even a little.

Neil is grateful that they take him then. Even when the gun presses against his lower back, the fear and panic don’t set in immediately; he still clings to the image of Andrew leaving and doesn’t tear his eyes away until he has to.

Until there is a voice near his ear whispering, “Come quietly.”

Neil blinks slowly. He turns his head to see because he really is curious, in a detached sort of way. He finds faces he doesn’t recognize but he isn’t surprised. Lola is pulling the strings here, and her people were always on the fringes. They were never powerful enough to mean much but always annoying enough to cause trouble.

“You can’t take me that way,” Neil says simply. He says it mostly for the foxes’ benefit and not for Lola’s; the very last thing he wants is for them to notice that he is gone.

The more time that passes without the foxes noticing, the further Neil can get from them. The further he can take the danger.

And if he goes far enough, maybe they won’t come looking. Maybe they’ll be safe.

The man with the gun digs the barrel harder into Neil’s back. “Walk. Now.”

So, Neil walks. He turns away from his friends, scattered among the crowd, and he walks. He walks and each step is like the drum beating in a song. He shifts with each beat, slipping into a skin that feels too tight for him.

_But you could never outgrow or outrun Nathaniel, could you?_

The men lead Nathaniel to a dark, sleek car. It is too expensive and dangerous to be something of Nathan’s; It is the sole clue that makes Nathaniel confident he was right. This is all Lola.

The car door opens and Nathaniel sees her there, lounging with her back against the opposite window. She has a slow smile like an oil slick when she sees Nathaniel standing before her.

“Well, hello, Junior,” Lola says. “Are you ready to have fun?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now i'm back  
> from outer space  
> just started writing this again  
> got no clue how to save face
> 
> ...hello, hope you enjoy this too-short return as i transition back into the drama


	15. blink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is there and gone, and he doesn't expect to come back.

They’re looking for Neil.

Andrew has the remnants of a half-eaten ice cream in his hand, sugar-milk concoction dripping sticky onto his fingers. He has the distinct thought that Neil owes him an ice cream. He also has the distinct thought that he is compartmentalizing.

_He wouldn’t leave._ _Right?_

Andrew can’t say for sure. Not when it comes to himself, at least. But Aaron is here, and Neil would never just leave him, and Aaron doesn’t know where Neil is.

The crushed shards of waffle cone end up in the nearest trash can and Andrew wipes at his dirty hands with cheap napkins; they feel like sandpaper against his skin. Everything is too loud and too close. It feels like he’s sensitive to the air.

“I’m gonna ping him,” Aaron says. It sounds like a threat. He looks like he’s trying to be threatening, despite the fact that he’s more than a foot shorter than most of the Foxes around him.

Seth runs a hand through his hair. “There’s a reason Wymack—”

“Yeah, I know,” Aaron snaps. “But I don’t think the reason applies when one of us is missing. He’s been gone before, remember? Didn’t turn out so well.”

Aaron is already pressing fingers behind his ear, eyes flickering with light as he accesses whatever connection he has to Neil. Andrew turns and looks down the street where all the ignorant people are milling, completely unaware that the world is falling apart.

“Where’s Kevin?” Andrew crosses his arms over his chest. Of course, it would be now that Kevin wanders off, too. “They—”

“If we’re lucky, they’re hooking up in a dressing room,” Allison says raggedly. She’s smiling but it’s sharp. She knows something is wrong.

It’s not funny how much Andrew wants to feel okay that both Neil and Kevin are gone.  _ Two idiots together isn’t better than one. _

Aaron makes a strangled noise and Andrew turns on his heel, pushing past the others to grab his brother’s chin. He is looking for any signs of corruption or a blown-out implant; instead, he finds Aaron’s eyes wide and horrified. They look like flat mirrors.

“He’s gone,” Aaron says, his voice choked. “He’s—he’s just—”

This is what blind panic looks like. It’s an animal instinct, a driving fear that forces everything into a tiny corner of the brain. Andrew knows what it feels like. Now he thinks he knows what it looks like, on a face so similar but different than his.

He never wanted to know.

“What do you mean, gone?” Seth asks calmly. “How?”

“I don’t—it just—”

“Focus,” Seth says. He snaps in front of Aaron’s face and Andrew is tempted to break his finger. The only reason he doesn’t is because he can see Aaron finding Seth’s voice through a sea of chaos, his eyes focusing as he tries to think. “Think,” Seth says. “How could this happen?”

“I...he could...he could’ve taken the implant out,” Aaron fumbles, squeezing his eyes shut for a second as he tries to think. “Um...it could be corrupted. Or he’s…”

_ He’s dead. _

No one says it, but that doesn’t make it less true. Less audible, the danger ringing in the air even without a voice to give it substance. It echoes in Andrew’s head and bounces off hollow rooms he never meant to keep empty so long.  _ Not hating someone is giving away a room, an empty room. What are you using it for? All that hate is taking up space. _

There was so much space before and now there’s only rooms of useless boxes, memories and categorized things like the pleased flutter of Neil’s lashes when Andrew kissed him. There are crates of photo negatives and Andrew can see the blackness in each of them now, like every moment was just a warning that this was eventually going to happen.

“Okay,” Seth reasons slowly. “Maybe someone hacked him like they tried to hack Andrew, or maybe he took it out. Maybe he did something. If he saw someone that was looking for him, he probably went dark, right?”

“There he is,” Allison says suddenly. Andrew jerks around too fast, his feet almost coming out from beneath him. He doesn’t see Neil, though. “Fucking Kevin,” Allison curses, tense. “I swear to God, if he left Neil somewhere—”

Kevin has a bag in his hand. He slows as he approaches the other, uneasiness creeping onto his face. Andrew knows the second he sees Kevin’s face that he knows.  _ He knew all along. _

Andrew lunges.

There’s a flurry of exclamations and movement, but no one is fast enough to reach Andrew. He has one hand tangled in Kevin’s shirt and the other flying at his arm in the span of a second. Kevin makes a startled noise and bends down, instinct from years with Andrew making him meet the demand to come closer.

“What do you know?” Andrew growls. He isn’t yelling yet but it feels close. He can feel someone pull at him and he blindly lashes out at them. The world is black and there is a pinprick of red light in the distance.

It’s stupid how his head echoes with Neil’s voice. He can hear Neil talking in his ear and he can’t make it stop. All the boxes spilled over, knocked down in Andrew’s rush to find some clue as to what happened.

How he could have missed this coming.

Kevin shudders. It rolls through his body and his eyes are strangely glazed, distant and unreachable even as Andrew’s hand twists in his collar. Kevin pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and scrapes, eyes shut like he thinks he can puzzle it out faster if he doesn’t look.

Andrew pulls again. “What. Do. You. Know.”

It comes out of Kevin in a waterfall, the words harshly tumbling from his throat. “The Butcher. His father is the Butcher.”

The world seems unreal. The edges of Andrew’s vision tunnel in, black creeping into the world like a vignette. Everything narrows to the words coming out of Kevin’s mouth and the revelation that Neil is the Butcher’s son.  _ The Butcher. _

The person that mangled Kevin’s hand at the command of Riko, at the command of Tetsuji. The Butcher, the faceless chop shop mastermind that operated the biggest scrap ring in the world. The Moriyamas were the beauty and danger of the tekno-magic world. The Butcher was the guts, the grime, the broken gears. Steel teeth that shredded metal and ate parts.

“You should have—”

“He should have told you,” Kevin retorts. He nearly flinches when he says it, as if he expects to be hit for saying it. His eyes are wide and his breathing uneven, some frenzied energy gripping him while the words pour out. “It wasn’t my secret to speak, and it should never have been mine to keep in the first place. I only found out—”

“I don’t care,” Andrew says quietly.

_ Say it enough. Maybe it’ll be true. _

Allison was already jogging away from the market, glancing over her shoulder as she went. “We need to get back, now. We have to find him.”

_ Too late,  _ a quiet voice in Andrew’s head whispered. It laughed even as he started to follow the others back to the foxhole.  _ Too late. _

♅

Nathaniel watches the city through a moon roof. He feels like vomiting, not because he ate anything, but because he’s been holding in screams for so long. They are stuck to his throat like dead flies in tape, bloated and frozen in time.

The car smells like singed things. His arms are a patchwork of ruined bio-skin and sizzling tek metal. Lola knows she can’t really damage the tekno-magic with the car lighter in her hand. She’s doing it because Nathaniel is still mostly human and he can feel pain. He feels it like fire poured into his veins. The pain is bad, but the tek makes it worse, metal grating and steel muscles contracting to protect itself against the heat and force.

After twenty minutes, Lola’s glee had faded into casual boredom. She moved on from aimlessly burning him and began a mechanical pattern along Nathaniel’s arms, tiny starburst marks dotted on his skin while she talked endlessly about how weak he was and how useless it was to run.

Lola muses as Nathaniel blinks through a haze of smoke, eyes staring out the moon roof and toward the clouds. “Do you know how tedious this is?” She frowns and digs the lighter against Nathaniel’s elbow. “I could be doing things. Better things.”

“Like what? Monologuing to someone that actually cares?”

It is a mistake to speak to her. Lola shifts sideways, dark eyes glittering as she draws her knife. The blade shimmers, its obsidian edge shifting colors with the city lights that filtered through the moon roof. Nathaniel knows what is coming.

Not that it helps. Lola digs the blade into Nathaniel’s arm and he clamps his mouth shut so hard he tastes blood. A strangled grunt hums in his throat. “Oh, come on,” Lola coaxes. “You can do better than that.”

Lola sighs. She traces her blade down Nathaniel’s arm, winding a path through the burn marks. There is no real direction to her cruelty; it is a mindless infliction of pain. There is no point to what she does, just an interest in damage.

“You shouldn’t break things that aren’t yours,” Nathaniel says. He knows better than to talk but he does, and he has the suspicion that it is Neil filtering through the cracks, twisting his tongue into shapes it shouldn’t make.

“You think this is breaking?” Lola laughs softly. “You aren’t broken yet. Not even close.”

She is right. Nathaniel knows it as well as she does. This is only the beginning, and she is not even the real monster. She is just the prelude.

Time doesn’t follow a path. It twists and turns as much as the path the car takes, some moments stretching forever and others disappearing in the blink of an eye. Nathaniel digs his nails into his edges and holds himself together by threads, refusing to dissolve under Lola’s careful torture.

Eventually, they make it to where they were always meant to go. Lola doesn’t bother sedating him the entire trip or even cloaking the car; she knows that he knows where they are going. No amount of turning him in circles will make him forget the smell of the trees when he is shoved out of the car, or the crunch of gravel underfoot.

The place sits on the road as it always did, hunching like a wolf over a fresh kill. The brick is a violent, rusty red, like dried blood that won’t wash off. It is two stories, officially—the top was their house, kitchen and bedrooms and the hallway Nathaniel ran down more times than he could count. The bottom was the shop, with its wide garage space and the laughing men whose hands smelled like gasoline always.

There is a third, unofficial story. A story that involves a basement and blood. Money, knives, laughter. Screaming.

A boy, hiding terrified in a closet until he was dragged out by his hair. Too young to remember, too old to forget.

_ Come here, boy. You be our toy, now. _

Lola’s knife jabs into Nathaniel’s back. “Move.” She sneers, red lipstick dry and cracked from the journey. “Go.”

Nathaniel walks. He knows where he is meant to go. Lola prods him along and her muscle, two unrecognizable men, take up their guard by the door. It’s a useless display. Nathaniel knows he can’t run. He won’t even try.

The place smells the same. He feels eight again when he steps through the door, the scent of a mechanic’s shop heavy in the air. It is eerily silent, emptiness where there should be metal clanging and voices shouting. The counter they walk by is dusty. There is a sheet of paper there, yellowed and disintegrating, a receipt for something innocuous like a tuning for a home bot. There is probably an additional box near the bottom, a vague reference to  _ diagnostic,  _ unexplained and only incurring a few dollars’ difference. Nathaniel knows these small charges. They are favors given, parts and tekno-magic corrupted, under-the-table consultations ending in an agreement to meet formally.

The Butcher was an expert in collecting favors. It was why the Moriyamas wanted him, and why Tetsuji killed him when he took control from Kengo.

_ Favor is a dangerous thing. A man can do a lot when people like him. _

The door to the basement stairs is open. Nathaniel can’t help the stutter in his step when he sees it and the black chasm beyond, no light piercing the damp bowels of the house. He swallows, mouth paper-dry, and then Lola digs her blade into his neck. “Move,” she demands. She sounds pleased by his hesitation. “Go on, Junior.”

Every footstep is a screaming reminder.  _ No choice, no choice, no choice.  _ Nathaniel descends, the smell of wet stone and dusty corners thick in the air. It feels as if the earth is falling over him, like he is already in his grave and just waiting to die.

When Nathaniel’s feet hit the concrete, Lola hits the back of his head with the grip of her knife. Nathaniel grits his teeth and lurches forward, trying not to fall. Lola’s hand twists into the back of his collar and shoves him forward, deeper into the darkness. There is only one light in the corner, a heavy storm flashlight propped on a broken card table.

“Sit,” Lola demands. She tosses Nathaniel toward a chair, upholstered seat stained with unidentifiable liquids He doesn’t have time to react; heavy hands descend on his shoulders and shove him down.

Nathaniel calculates. There are two men by the front door, probably two by the back even if he hasn’t seen them. There is one man behind him, the one that pushed him into his seat. Lola. Five people and one very dangerous person.

Escape is not guaranteed. Avoiding the men outside is possible, but the man in the room will attack if Nathaniel attacks Lola. He could go for the man first, but there’s no guarantee Lola will be in the mood to watch and laugh. Even if Nathaniel killed the man, there would still be Lola, and he can see a shadow near her waist that tells him she has a gun.

He has no way out of this. Not now. It would be stupid to run; his only choice is to wait and stay, and maybe think of some way to sell his soul when it’s already changed hands too many times. Nathaniel has nothing to bargain with anymore.

“Thinking.” Lola laughs, tracing her dagger against the back of Nathaniel’s neck. “Did you know, your stupid little self-sacrifice is what told us where you were.”

_ Of course it did.  _ Nathaniel bites his tongue. He knew better than to think Proust wouldn’t catch up to him.

Neil doesn’t care. It was worth it.

Lola hums in mock confusion. “We thought it was a trick at first. Why, oh why, would Junior say, ‘here I am?’ After all that time? Was he...homesick?”

“I admit, I do feel sick right now. But not because of home.”

Lola digs the tip of her blade into Nathaniel’s shoulder. The amusement is gone from her voice, replaced by a low annoyance. “I don’t remember you talking so much before.” 

She paces around Nathaniel’s chair and crouches before him. Her sharp, broken red nails scratch delicately along the side of his face. She looks wistful when she says, “I think I remember you screaming more.”

♅

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Wymack is stone-faced. Aaron wants to slap him until he reacts, does something, anything. Neil is gone.

Neil is gone and it’s Aaron’s fault.

_ How did I not know?  _ The question won’t go away, no matter how many times Aaron tells the voice in his head to shut up. There’s no point in asking because he isn’t going to find an answer.

It’s simple. Neil didn’t tell him and Aaron didn’t look closely enough.

Seth brushes against Aaron’s side. He stands closer to Wymack than Aaron and somehow it’s like he’s blocking out the sun, acting like a shield or a tree giving Aaron a spot of shade and respite. Seth’s arms are crossed over his chest and he evaluates the scene, Kevin arguing and Andrew simmering darkly in the corner. Matt and Allison are talking over each other.

“Enough,” Seth says, his voice raised over everyone else. He hasn’t used this kind of volume since he spent his hours smelling like whiskey and draping himself over furniture. “I don’t believe you’re all so self-centered you’ll ignore the real problem to bitch at each other about who did or didn’t do what.”

Kevin stares at the floor. He might be the closest to crying Aaron has ever seen him. Even Dan looks frustrated, one hand pressed against her forehead as she shakes her head. It shouldn’t make Aaron feel any better, but somehow, he does. He clears his throat and steps up next to Seth, closer to reality and the others.

“We need a plan,” Aaron starts. “We need to find where he is and bring him home.”

“If they took him to the Castle, there’s no chance,” Kevin says, hollow. “There is no way in or out. He was supposed to—”

“I don’t think they took him there,” Aaron replies slowly. He is gradually becoming aware of the concept, a lingering thought that’s been gnawing at the edges of his panic. “You said he’s the Butcher’s son, right? The man they killed? Maybe it’s not them trying to grab Neil. If they wanted him dead, he’d be dead. Not stolen.”

“You think the criminal empire the Butcher left behind was organized enough to stick together and plot a kidnapping? For what?” Matt asks, throwing his hands up. “Unless there’s something we don’t know, why kill a kid that’s been purposefully staying away?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” Seth says shortly. “Someone new came into power and wants to kill the competition. Tie up loose ends. Or they want revenge and they know how valuable Neil is, so they want to trade him back or reprogram him. Crime isn’t usually too smart, but revenge? Revenge always thinks it’s smart. Sometimes it’s lucky enough to look like it.”

“If they really did work for NEST, maybe they know how to do to Neil what they did to Riko,” Kevin realizes slowly, his eyes wide and horrified as he stares at Aaron. “They could rewrite everything. Send him after us, or the Moriyamas.”

“Or both,” Nicky says nervously. “He wouldn’t stand a chance. Easy suicide mission. He takes care of himself if he fails.”

“Then it’s a good thing we won’t let it happen,” Seth says shortly. “We need to know where he is? Easy. I’ll get in touch with LE and figure out where the Butcher was based.”

“Do you still have any contacts?” Wymack interrupts, eyes narrowed.

Seth shrugs. “I fell off the grid. I didn’t quit. Some of us wanted to do good, so here’s a chance.”

Aaron nods to himself. “Kevin, I need you.”

“What?”

“We’re going to do something stupid.”

♅

Seth is aware that he’s being followed, not necessarily because he was a cop, but because his tail is doing a very good job of making themselves obvious in a discreet way. Which is difficult to do. This is why Seth pretends not to notice for a mile while he decides what to do.

His eventual choice is to duck into a stall that smells like noodles and steamed buns. There are rows of fake, glossy black rolls lined up in a glass case. The display makes his stomach rumble more than it already was. Seth steps up to the counter and orders four things— _ Allison always ate more than me, but it was always me getting shit from Kevin _ —before turning to look over his shoulder.

“You?”

The man is familiar, from the club. He has mismatched eyes and short, dirty blond hair. He appraises Seth silently for a long minute before turning to the man at the counter and ordering shortly in perfect Korean. When he finishes, Seth raises his eyebrows and pays.

There’s a booth in the back corner of the tiny shop. Seth leads the way and the stranger slides in across from him, bending one leg up onto the seat as he settles. Seth almost laughs and the stranger pauses, considering. “What?”

“Neil. He doesn’t sit right either.”

The painful smile on the man’s face reminds Seth of himself. It’s the loss of a relationship he sees. A deep relationship. “What’s your name?”

“Dietrich.”

“And you knew him.”

Dietrich leans his chin on his hand. Despite his muscle and the stubble on his jaw, he looks young, like he’s experienced more than he should have in less time than he deserved. “I did know him. He had a different name, different face.”

“Face?”

“Not that way.” Dietrich smiles, wry, then leans back as a server slides plates and bowls onto their table. “But you know. Changes.”

Seth hums. “He’s missing.”

There’s a stutter in Dietrich’s hand as he reaches for a roll cut open to reveal rice and a few pickled things. “Oh.”

“You knew it would happen.”

“I did.”

_ Doesn’t make it easier.  _ Seth pokes and stirs at his noodles for a few minutes. Eating always feels wrong amidst crisis, but he knows there’s nothing to do but wait. Aaron and Kevin are planning something and until then, Seth doesn’t have anything to add. He has nothing to do. All he can do is wait for a call from his contact and hope that it pays off

Dietrich picks up a yellowy circle of pickled radish from the table and turns it over. “What are you going to do?”

“Find him. Bring him home.”

Dietrich’s mouth twists into an approximation of a smile. It looks sardonic and feels familiar. “Are you?”

“Yes. I’m working on where they have him. The others are planning something to disrupt any tek.”

“And him?”

“Aaron thinks he has a plan. It’ll be tight, but we think it’ll work.”

Silence. Dietrich casually samples a few things before pointing his chopsticks at Seth. “You want to kill him.”

“Rude.”

“You do.”

“Not exactly.” Seth shrugs and steals a slice of Dietrich’s kimbap. “Aaron assures us it’s not death. More like suspension. He’ll stop for a second—the blink of an eye—and then we’ll hook him with a temporary generator.”

“If it works. Given the tek bomb.” Dietrich crosses his arms. “You realize that it’s—”

“—a double-edged blade? Very much. But we won’t have a choice if we want the advantage. We don’t know how many there are, or if NEST will be there.”

Dietrich chews on the information. Seth can see it, an internal struggle to digest that he is no longer the most important person to Neil. Not even close. He is on the sidelines, pushed away and left to wait while someone he cares about suffers.

It’s hard to let go. Seth got very drunk one night after Allison broke up with him, and when he almost broke Aaron’s leg, Andrew stabbed him. Seth spent the night in an emergency room and Aaron said,  _ let’s go. _

He didn’t mean home.

Seth knows a lot about letting go. He knows about the selfish part of holding on, where part of you wants to stay because you can’t stand not being important to the other person. The selfish part makes you ignore the rest of your life because how could it be important when there’s nothing waiting for you? Letting go is hard because it means not knowing what’s next, except that it won’t be what you knew before.

“Do you want to help?”

_ Bad idea _ . Seth knows better but still, he says it. He recognizes the dullness in Dietrich’s eyes and he knows the pain there. He can’t even imagine what it might be like for someone so used to violence and death, for him to have one person and then lose them.

Dietrich smiles, more tired than happy. “I can’t. But thank you.”

“You sure?”

“There are other things I can do, I think.” Dietrich closes his eyes and sets his chopsticks aside. “Thank you. For the food.”

“Too bad the conversation didn’t hold up.”

Dietrich laughs, faint but real. It makes him handsome, Seth thinks, and it shows the dimples in his cheeks. “I appreciate you, Seth.”

_ Sounds mafia-y.  _ Seth doesn’t mind. He likes the idea of a scary mafia member liking him. “Thanks. I appreciate you, too.”

“I’ll be near.” Dietrich stands and leaves a few credits on the table. “Try not to die, Seth. I’d like to have lunch again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been a minute  
> I'm tired


	16. copper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They want him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!! TW: This chapter contains a lot of blood and some gore. You can scroll to the end notes for specifics. !!!

“I have news,” Seth says. He glances over his shoulder as he walks through the door, as if he expects someone to be right behind him.

Aaron doesn’t like it but there’s no time to ask. “Good. We have a plan.”

Kevin rounds the others up while Seth clears the table in the living room, tapping it to bring the screen to life. It illuminates softly and Seth presses the first two fingers of his left hand to the tabletop. The implants there glow softly, data transmitting with police-grade encryption. Aaron had asked to look at them once; Seth had just smirked and said something about being punished for letting a civilian look.

Everyone assembles around the table while Seth organizes a series of screens. Once he’s done, he leans back on his heels and gestures. “They couldn’t give me just one, so I’ve been processing the data for a few hours. I’m not perfect, but I’m pretty damn sure I managed to take it down to three different facilities.”

“Why couldn’t they give you one?” Dan asks.

“It’s an obvious data pull. At least this way, the general search might buy them time. No matter what, the Moriyama name will be pinged. The least I can do is make them seem less suspicious.”

“As much good as it’ll do,” Kevin mutters.

Aaron waves a hand impatiently. “Fine. So, where?”

“Given the choices? This one.” Seth enlarges a screen. The video he shows looks old, as if taken more than ten years ago. The camera work is shaky. It looks like a two-story, flat building. One side has open garage doors. “Seems right for what the Butcher might do.”

“We’re still operating on the assumption that this isn’t Moriyama work,” Matt says, frowning. “Is that a safe assumption to make?”

“Probably not,” Kevin says, mouth twisted into a sharp smile. “But if you mean who has him, yes. The Master may have orchestrated it, but there’s no way they went out of their way to catch him. Especially if there’s blood involved.”

Family blood, he means. Even knowing this, Aaron shivers. It’s been seven hours since Neil disappeared and every hour feels worse. It feels like his heartbeat is repeating the word  _ abandoned  _ over and over again.

He knows it isn’t true. They haven’t abandoned Neil, wouldn’t even if they were in the most difficult situation. It’s just guilt and fear that make Aaron feel like he isn’t doing enough.

Kevin glances at Aaron. He hesitates, but only for a moment. “We do have a plan,” he says, taking charge when he doesn’t see Aaron open his mouth. “It’s risky. You know we have a tek bomb. It’ll stop all tek in the radius of about three miles, giving us a window of roughly three minutes, and that’s if it works perfectly.”

“Remind me why this is smart,” Matt says, but his shoulders are set and Aaron knows he’ll go along.

“Because we have no clue how armed they are,” Aaron finally says. “A tek bomb will guarantee that we’re in the dark for three minutes. None of us really need our augmentations; taking them out won’t kill us, or even slow us down.”

“Really?” Seth crosses his legs as he leans against the wall, eyes narrowed at Kevin. “Just how well-integrated is your tek, Kevin?”

Kevin stares at the table in the center of the room, but his gaze is distant and fuzzy. “I’ll survive it. I’ll be slow, but it won’t matter.”

“The timeline will be tight,” Aaron continues, trying to keep his voice even. “We’ll knock everything out, and then we have three minutes to get Neil as far as we can. Matt will take him with Kevin.”

“I’ll do a perimeter sweep before everyone gets there,” Seth supplies, as if this was the plan all along and he isn’t just throwing it in right then and there. Aaron almost admires him. “Once I know what’s going on, I can send a low-link message. Encrypted, we can hope they’ll take it as interference. It looks like the area is old, so there must be some radio overlap.”

“Okay,” Allison says, nodding. “Seth does a sweep, we get the details, get in place, go dark. What happens after we get Neil, though? Three minutes won’t get us far, especially if he’s dead weight. Say we get a mile. That’s still not enough to get out of the area of effect and our getaway ride.”

“I’m your getaway,” Renee says. Her smile is patient, stern. Aaron had expected her to go in with everyone else—he knows she’s a fighter—but she had other plans. “I’ll come as close as I can once the time is up. The residual interference shouldn’t be an issue.”

Wymack exhales slowly. Aaron looks at him and suddenly, he realizes Wymack isn’t as young as he remembered. He isn’t old, but he’s supposed to be beyond this. Beyond entanglement with NEST and everything their empire has done to him and the ones he cares about.

“I guess that’s it,” Wymack says shortly. “We aren’t going to take this lying down. It might not be what we planned, but it’s enough for now. We’ll have to move our schedule up.”

“If he’s even in a condition to help after this,” Matt says, amazed. “I mean, damn. Haven’t we put him through enough? He’s—”

“He’s human, not a different person,” Aaron says quietly. It hurts to say it, more than he thought it would. “He’ll still help, no matter how hard we try to keep him out of it.”

Seth crosses the room. His hand pushes on Aaron’s shoulder for a moment, grounding him. It seems to bring the world back into focus, something snapped in place. “We all need sleep,” he says. “I know it’s early, but I say four hours and then we go. No wasting time.”

“No wasting time,” Kevin agrees.

Aaron breathes in and out, closes his eyes, listens to his heartbeat. He can’t stop thinking about Neil, seeing his blue eyes flicker, watching him lapse into silence in their shared bedroom because his battery is running out.  _ He’s always been dying, and for what? For watching the shop while I was gone? Making sandwiches? _

It was never worth it. Aaron turns away from the living room and ignores the words directed at him; he can’t open his mouth without screaming. He wishes Neil was there so he could shake him and ask why.  _ Why did you kill yourself for me? I was never worth it. _

The truth doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is the plan and Neil. Aaron will bring him out of that place if he has to die to do it.

 ♅

“You lied, didn’t you?”

Kevin finds Seth leaning in his doorway, arms crossed, as casual as if he always does this. As if he never left. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Another one.” Seth raises an eyebrow, pushes away from the door. “Do the lies never end?”

Maybe it’s the time that makes Kevin too tired to reply, or maybe it’s the impending doom he feels lingering on his shoulders, behind his back. It is only a matter of time before he storms the castle with everyone else to get Neil back. Only a matter of time before they detonate the bomb that might kill both him and Neil. Only if Kevin dies, no one will think to look for him. He’ll just be dead. Dead, until it’s too late to bring him back.

Seth sighs and shuts the door behind him. He’s barefoot for some reason, already in sweatpants that rest low on his hips and an old t-shirt that looks like it’s too small, like he left it at the Foxhole before he ran with Aaron. “All right. Let’s make it easy. You tell me, and I don’t have to wring it out of you.”

“Same solution to an old problem,” Kevin replies. Something in him tenses, prepared. They never used to fight, at least not physically. Seth would say things, but Kevin never listened. He didn’t listen to anyone. That was one of his problems.

Seth’s problem was all the anger wrapped up inside of him. It rested in a pit that weighed his stomach down, made him vomit nasty words and screams warped by hate. Seth used to be a nightmare, but it was always a nightmare of self-directed rage.

Riko had been similar. Riko hated himself for a long time, and then he hated the people who made him. The rules he had to follow. All his hate made him believe in the worst of himself, and he lashed out. He couldn’t be touched. Kevin just couldn’t stop seeing the boy he’d known and the games they’d learned together, coding and hacking faster than the speed of light, racing until they were laughing and exhilarated.

_ Would he have turned out this way? Riko? If he’d lived? _

“Stop,” Seth says. Kevin blinks and finds Seth very close, almost toe-to-toe, head tilted as he inspects Kevin’s face for some unspoken sign.This close, Kevin can see the creases at the corner of Seth’s eyes. He can see the honey-brown color of his irises and all its golden facets.

_ It would be a very fun, self-destructive thing to do if I kissed him. _

The thought is almost horrifically amusing. Kevin shakes his head and says, “I didn’t do anything.”

“When are you going to stop lying to me, and yourself?”

“Fuck you.”

“You wish you would.”

Kevin can’t tell if Seth is serious anymore. He doesn’t know what to say if he isn’t and knows even less what to say if he is. Seth abruptly turns away and walks to the window, a tired sigh escaping him. “All right,” he says, hands held up in surrender. “I’m not going to poke. But I know you lied. Something is going to happen to you.”

Kevin isn’t sure what the taste in his mouth is. It could be copper or it could be disappointment. He thinks that he expected someone else to notice, someone else to come and demand an answer. Andrew, probably. It’s unfair. Andrew has Neil to worry about.

“So, you’re looking after me, now?” Kevin asks. He wishes he could sound sharper.

Seth tilts his head back against the window behind him. His neck is a bright, pale blue on one side, the moon glowing on his skin. “Don’t worry. It’s unofficial business. Pleasure, I guess.”

“You like that I’m going to die?”

“No.”

Kevin laughs, more of a bark than anything humorous. “Why do I still hate you if you’re a better person?”

“I’m not a better person.” Seth shifts, something in his eyes piercing. Kevin feels like he shouldn’t move, like if he does, he’ll break some unspoken spell. “And you never hated me. Not really. Did you?”

_ I wish it were true. _ It’s easier, so much easier, to hate. Dislike. Not caring is an art, and hard to keep up. It’s simpler to say you hate and pour your energy into that hate, water the seed until the weed begins to choke the life out of anything else you might feel. Kevin wishes he could just hate Seth.

“I don’t.” It’s a confession, or at least as close as he can come to one. Kevin wants to claw at his throat and pull his tongue out. He hates that he said it.

Seth softens, shoulders shifting, every imposing inch of him pulling away from the window and the cold light there. He steps back into the room and its shadows, a little more human and a little less perfect, better,  _ fixed. _

“What do you need?” Seth asks. He says the words without qualification, as if he is the one to do anything and everything that might be asked. Like Seth is there without any personal gain, without anyone telling him to, without reservation.

Kevin doesn’t know the answer.  _ Attention? Care? _

_ Hope? _

“I don’t…” Kevin shakes his head, lost. There are no words in his mouth, none in his brain. Nothing comes out. “I need—I need...to live.”

Seth nods. He is serious, but there is a smile on his lips, something unexpected that draws Kevin in. It’s impossible. “I can do that.”

 ♅

Andrew doesn’t want to wait. He doesn’t want to but he does, fists clenched and sheets tight around his body. He doesn’t trust it to stay in bed until the morning.

They assemble quietly when the sky outside is still dark, serious faces and weapons equally present. Nicky flexes his hands and rubs his thumbs along the scars, testing the sensation of the sword that rests within him. Kevin comes downstairs late and Seth follows close behind, arms crossed over his chest and his sweater lopsided. Everyone is in a state of in-between, wired but still half-asleep, wishing for things to begin and be over at the same time.

Wymack exhales slowly. “I’ll drop you all a block away. Aaron will give me a heads up before he sets it off. Don’t take any risks; you know the drill.”

They pile into the van, something Andrew hasn’t seen the inside of in years. He last saw it when Seth and Aaron were still at the Foxhole, back when they all traveled to do work as a team. They would fix things, repair tek and systems, assess damage and security systems. They kept their jobs small and avoided the big cities. It was a way to live, and it kept them away from NEST.

It’s different now. It’s been different since Kevin decided to break Jean out, since Aaron brought Neil to the Foxhole. 

_ This is all really about him, isn’t it? _

The terrain changes as Wymack takes back tracks to their destination, the old shop with its two stories and rotting fences. Andrew tries not to imagine Neil in these places as they go, rusted playgrounds and wet earth, small corner stores with stickers on the sidewalk. Andrew tries not to imagine Neil hiding under the porch of a small white house, shivering in the rain, eyes wide as heavy boots passed in front of him. He would have been a child here, a child split open and torn apart inside just for the curiosity of a monster.

Wymack pulls up a block away and a block across, distant enough to make an approach but close enough to get away later. He shuts the van off and turns in his seat. “You know what to do. Work together.”

He doesn’t have to say more. The door slides open and they all pour out, weapons ready and tek buzzing. The white suits they wear were made by Kevin and Aaron years ago, adjusted tek that helps them blend into the rest of the world. The orange piping flickers with magic, little charms to go unseen and undetected sparking and popping with each step.

Nicky pulls his sword from his hands, the skin reddening as magic pumps through his veins. He swipes it through the air, practiced, and a few drops of blood hit the ground. His palms knit together, bloody and raw, and he curls his hand around the grip. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

“Split up,” Kevin says. He clips an earpiece on and taps it until an orange cast flickers around his head, tekno-magic shield glittering along his skin in a grid. “Stay on comms until we close in. Aaron will give the signal. All of you need to get in, knock out the exits, and be ready to run.”

“Watch each other’s backs,” Dan adds. She twists the bracers on her wrists, hard white metal with tek dots that make her hits harder. “Don’t rush and don’t go for the kill. We’re looking for disruption.”

“The more of us they think are there, the better our chances,” Kevin finishes. “Suit up and hit them where they aren’t looking.”

That’s really the plan, Andrew thinks as he follows Kevin toward the sidewalk. When he looks, he can see Kevin’s body disappear. It is there one second and gone the next until all that’s left is an orange outline, thin and visible only to someone on the same communication network. They are ghosts to the rest of the world, and they are dangerous. They have come for theirs.

The fence surrounding the building is different from the old pictures. It’s chain-link now, topped with wire and refusing entry. Kevin links his hands and boosts Andrew over, one push and a slight rush from his augmentations. Kevin climbs up to the top, jumps, executes a turn over the barbed wire that is so perfect it doesn’t even flicker with responding magic. They’re over.

The others are along the perimeter, crossing whichever way they see fit. Andrew turns to the fence after Kevin lands and flexes his hands. Kevin frowns. “What are you—”

Andrew tears the fence open, absorbing the crackle of magic while he warps the metal links into a large enough hole to run through. He can feel the curse rattling behind his teeth, eats the magic and lets it burn going down. “Back door,” he says.

“Very dramatic,” Kevin says tersely. “Let’s go.”

It looks like a dead place. The ground is more dirt than grass, old spots of sickly brownish-yellow indicating places where there used to be machinery and cars. Maybe other things. Buried hatchets.

The building itself sits loathsome in between a corner lot and a wide, empty plot that stretches toward the freeway. It’s the kind of place where there should be slums nearby, or at least a tent or two. That’s how Andrew knows something was wrong here once and still is; there are no people, no passers-by, no one walking their dog or scavenging for metal. Not even birds dare to sit on the fences.

There’s a suspicious lack of personnel. Either someone knows the foxes are coming, or they never thought it was possible. Andrew knows better than to wish they aren’t expected. He keeps one hand on his tek blade and the other curled into a fist.

They hit the first sentinel when they come around the corpse of an old van, tires gone and body smelling like the rusted remains of a bloodbath. Andrew doesn’t indulge thoughts about what it may have been used for once. He slides along the rear bumper and sees a man with his back to them, hands loose at his sides, feet evenly spaced.

This one knows how to fight.

Andrew motions for Kevin to wait. He slides up behind the sentinel and kicks off a pile of old brick leaning up against the building; he catches the man’s neck with his arms and brings his blade up. The world tilts and Andrew is thrown over the man’s shoulder, slamming toward the ground.  _ He knows how to fight. _

Andrew twists in the man’s grip and his boots skid against the dirt, the toe of his shoe barely escaping the side of the building by a centimeter. The fight has been silent, but that will change. Andrew darts forward—he needs to make sure the alarm isn’t raised—and the man takes a half-step back to dodge. He steps right into Kevin, whose hands slam against the man’s ears.

The man wobbles, unsteady on his feet, disoriented. Andrew paces toward him and grabs the man’s head before slamming it into his knee. The man grudgingly sags onto the ground, fighting unconsciousness for a few seconds before he passes out.

_ If Kevin wasn’t here, that would have been much harder.  _ Andrew looks up at Kevin. “They’re better than I thought. We need to be careful.”

“We will,” Kevin says shortly. He’s already moving toward the side door, crouching to get his hands on the lock. “They’ll be fine. They know what they’re doing.”

_ I didn’t say ‘them.’  _ Andrew wiggles his fingers, annoyed. Everything about this feels wrong, like a setup. There haven’t been many people waiting for them, and there haven’t been any traps, yet. It isn’t right. The Butcher’s people can’t be stupid enough not to protect themselves.

Kevin swings the door open to a man standing with a knife balanced on the tip of his finger. The man looks down at Kevin, eyes flat and black like a shark’s.

Andrew flips his own knife in his hand.  _ Two can play this game. _

 ♅

Nathaniel is fuzzy. His head is cottony, so many thoughts and feelings obscured by thick white fog. He is only vaguely aware that he has a body because he knows it should be there, is there.

Except Nathaniel blinks, looks past a frosted glass pane of drugs and pain, and sees that his feet are gone.

The rising swell of horror and panic cuts through the haze just enough for Neil to look up, a strangled cry escaping his throat before it dies in shattered pieces. His arms are above his head—or at least, he thinks they are—and he can’t move them. They’re locked in place.

Nathaniel closes his eyes, breathes raggedly in and out. He calculates survival, chances, number of guards that were there before. He guesses at time because there are no windows in this hellish box of cement and he’s unsure of when he lapsed into unconsciousness.

Lola stands in the corner, arms crossed. Her smile is tense, like she’s pretending to be happier than she is. It makes Nathaniel smile through the blood in his teeth. She glares at him like she wants to rip him from collarbone to gut, but she can’t do anything.

She can’t because Nathan is there, turning an axe over in his hand, curses crackling at his fingertips.

_Fuck me._ _Seriously?_

Nathan is a grotesque puppet of himself, paper mâché face horrific in its abstract scars and torn structure. The fissures on his body glow a deep ruby red, curses knitting together what tek can’t hope to save. He shouldn’t have been saved; Nathan is a cobbled-together monster of barely-moving parts fueled by hatred and bloodlust. He isn’t even truly Nathan anymore. He is a dead man walking.

It’s probably the horror in Nathaniel’s face that makes Nathan smile. It pulls the corner of his mangled mouth upward, split skin revealing more of his teeth and jaw than Nathaniel ever wanted to see. “You’re awake, Junior.”

_ Oh, God. What the fuck?  _ Nathaniel is left with his mouth gaping and his brain struggling to play catch-up. He doesn’t know what to say, knows there is nothing to do. He is suspended in time like a dragonfly in amber. He’s already dead. Nathan just has to decide to kill him.

Nathaniel’s silence isn’t appreciated. Nathan slaps him, hard, a curse-hot hand weighty and fast against Nathaniel’s cheek. His neck burns from the impact and he coughs, blood sticky on his tongue.

“Speak when spoken to,” Nathan says. It sounds like something is grating in his throat, maybe a torn vocal cord against a makeshift metal plate.

Nathaniel hopes everything is a fever dream. He hopes this isn’t real.

He knows better than to hope.

“Yes, sir.” Nathaniel chokes on his own blood, tastes the tang of vomit in his throat. He wonders how much more of him is missing. He can’t see the rest of his body.

Nathan holds the axe like he’s forgotten it’s there, heavy wooden handle loosely gripped and arms dangling at his sides. Nathaniel wonders if Nathan can feel his own body anymore or if he’s on so many curses that he can’t feel anything. He must be, to walk around like a chewed-up bone spit out by a rabid dog.

“You’re going to die here,” Nathan says. It is a guttural, quiet statement. It makes the panic rise again, stabbing at Nathaniel’s throat, screaming at him to scream.

_ Don’t go quietly,  _ it says.  _ Don’t go. _

There’s no way. Lola taps her knife against her thigh, gaze stormy, and Nathaniel looks her in the eye.  _ You don’t get the pleasure.  _ He almost laughs. It’s one thing he won’t mind about dying. If he can say  _ fuck you  _ to Lola, he’ll be happy.

“Yes,” Neil says. “But you already died.”

 ♅

They hear the scream.

Aaron is supposed to wait another three minutes but he detonates the bomb anyway; he doesn’t even think about doing it, it just happens, and he’s already sprinting down the hallway. He thinks there are people coming out of doors but he doesn’t stop. Nicky shouts something that might be  _ go _ , but Aaron isn’t listening.

There are doors at the end of the hallway. Double doors, bottom of the staircase, basement.  _ Basement.  _ He knows Neil hates the basement and now he knows, he knows why, he wants to vomit but knows he has to  _ get to him _ —

—and Aaron shoves open the doors and staggers forward, something audible cracking in his mind like shattered glass or broken tek, skin humming like he has a charm knitted onto his flesh. He sees blood, sees equipment, sees a body pinned upright to a table slanted at a sixty-degree angle. It’s too much to comprehend and then one thought punches through the rest with startling clarity, complete and audible.

_ They took his legs. _

There’s a woman by the door. She darts forward and Aaron moves without thinking. His fingers find a scalpel and he shoves it into her neck, twisting, a satisfying grind punctuated by a scream and a choke. Aaron knows he hit the right spot and he knows she’ll bleed out in under a minute. He yanks the scalpel out as messily as he can, revels in the blood, pushes aside the heaving in his stomach.  _ This fucking woman took him. She took his legs. _

A heavy hand lands on Aaron’s shoulder. He turns to find some kind of zombie, face a mangled mess, and then Aaron is shoved to his knees. The man is strong and Aaron flips the scalpel in his hand, prepared to cut through tendon and fight. He never has the chance.

A tanned arm swings around the man’s neck, a wide hand with pretty fingers scarred with fissures of glowing magic. The hand cradles the man’s neck and contracts, magic snapping and bright light obscuring everything. The amount of power in the small motion ends it, no blood, no last words, no chance to fight.

Kevin watches the man fall to his knees and looks at Aaron. There is something unspoken when their eyes meet, some exchange of information or emotion that Aaron can’t quite articulate.

There’s a small rasp from the table. Aaron turns on his heel and goes to Neil, whose blue eyes are crackling weakly. Neil is awake— _ awake and in pain _ —and Aaron fumbles for his arm before he remembers the tek bomb took out his augmentation.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Aaron manages. He chokes on the words, tries to string together an explanation.

Neil blinks; his eyes are drifting and he has to fight to keep them focused. “Not your fault,” he says. He has blood in his mouth and his brows knit together as he tries to think, tries to speak. “It—”

“Don’t talk,” Aaron says.  _ Remember. Remember. Training.  _ He lifts his hands because he knows he should check Neil’s pulse, test his pupillary reaction, start assessing the damage.

Neil catches Aaron’s hands halfway to his face. Kevin must have started to untie him. Neil looks Aaron in the eye and says, “Don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Aaron blinks.  _ Is that why things were blurry? I have to stop shaking. Training, remember.  _ “I’m going to fix you. Okay? I’m going to fix you.”

Neil smiles a little. He looks like he’s going to pass out. “Yeah,” he mumbles, blinking slowly. “You already did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!! TW Specifics: blood, amputation, death (but it's Lola, so) !!!
> 
> \- 
> 
> so uh sorry  
> i have been like  
> suffer
> 
> anyway i hope you enjoy  
> we're about 3 chapters from the end now


	17. who

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of the foxes have to sort through their return and the silent horror among them. Some of them need help to do it.

The foxhole was full of emptiness. The others were around somewhere, but Andrew hadn’t seen them in at least a day.

Forty-eight hours after finding Neil, the house is a grave of for the living, doors shut and creaky stairs silent. It feels like they are all suspended in motion, hovering above the ground, afraid to touch anything for fear that the carefully constructed facade will collapse.

_ It is all a house of cards,  _ something seems to whisper.  _ You cannot see until it falls down. _

Andrew stands next to a heavy wooden door; it is cracked a little, perhaps a centimeter or two, and he can’t really see through to the other side. Aaron shifts beyond the door, his voice a low murmur, and the creak of the floor responding makes the door tilt open just a little more. Andrew can’t stop his eyes from being drawn to the room.

Aaron has been with Neil since they left the hellhole they found him in. He’s been working almost around the clock, tools humming with tekno-magic. Nothing breaks the sanctity of the room; Aaron won’t let it. He only occasionally slips out for food when no one is looking—no one but Andrew, who will not leave, cannot leave, his feet cemented to the ground. He is part of the house now, part of its wooden bones. He feels almost as useless.

The door cracks open a little more. Aaron is there, his eyes exactly like Andrew’s and entirely different, more green than brown. The hazel is ringed by the faintest shadow; it’s not enough to indicate sleepless nights but enough to indicate a bone-deep tiredness that permeates the entire foxhole.

They are all too young for this. They’ve all been through too much.

Aaron shuts the door behind him. “He’s in one piece,” he says. His voice is rough with use. “He…”

Andrew shakes his head. He doesn’t need anything from Aaron, or even Neil.  _ Nathaniel. Was that the name?  _ He’s not sure what he needs.

He doesn’t want to.

“You need to rest. You’re not helpful like this.”

Aaron’s eyes sharpen. “You? Lingering by the door for two days? Not—”

“I sleep.”

“I believe you.” Aaron stares right at Andrew like he can see through him to something black and twisted, whatever is left of Andrew’s soul or something like it. “But I don’t think you’ve slept more than four hours altogether.”

He’s probably right. Andrew is tempted to reply, tempted to say  _ I haven’t been doing anything, why would I need sleep,  _ but he knows those words would be ill-received.

He doesn’t have to say anything, thankfully. Aaron shuts his eyes and exhales, pouring something out in his breath. He presses his hands to his eyes and when he opens them, the weariness is coupled with something like defeat. “Go,” he says quietly. He walks away, toward the stairs that lead to his room. “And don’t let him eat anything yet.”

Andrew didn’t expect it to be this easy and now, he is left with the difficult part, standing before the door and the room that holds Neil. All he is left with is his feet and the wayward thing in his chest that is burning and screaming at him to go inside.

There are plenty of voices in Andrew’s head telling him what he should do.  _ Go back to your room,  _ one says,  _ he needs rest. Fuck that,  _ another says,  _ you need to see him.  _ They wheedle and contradict and nudge Andrew in a thousand different directions.

The strongest voice says  _ I need to know. _

Andrew pushes the door open with his fingertips, a bare press of skin against wood. He slides into the space it creates and closes it behind him; he feels a whisper of relief that there are curtains blocking the rest of the room, the lights dimmed almost to darkness. It gives him time to adjust and time to think that maybe his face won’t be as stark and bare, open and seen.

Beyond the curtains is the workspace. Abby would use it for small repairs, usually, and Aaron used to have a corner of the room for himself. He’d set up a table and his tools when he was still studying. When he’d just started as a medical student. Now, the space is emptier, more of a spare room than a medical ward. There’s still an exam table at the far end of the room and a home-med apparatus, equipped for basic needs like broken arms and appendectomies. Allison pushed in some beds a year ago, so there’s a queen-size and two twins. There are bookcases mostly filled with things Aaron and Seth left behind, medical textbooks and books about mechanic work.

Neil is in the biggest bed near the back of the room, right by a window with curtains that are cracked an inch to let the sun in. It’s day now, Andrew realizes; he can see glimpses of blue sky and clouds beyond the glass. Neil has the sheets pulled up over his chest and his arms resting on pillows piled beneath his limbs. His face is tilted toward the window, freckles rosy on his cheeks and lashes fanned over his half-closed eyes.

Andrew doesn’t realize he is frozen in place until Neil turns to look at him, blinking slowly. “Come in.”

“Shouldn’t you be asleep.” Andrew bites his tongue so violently that he tastes blood. He forces himself to walk forward; he is not afraid, exactly, but he feels like coming too close will make everything unreal. He feels like if he breathes the wrong way, Neil will dissipate, just another cloudy dream that was never real.

Neil blinks slowly. He seems like he is in slow motion, maybe from whatever drugs he had to take or because he’s still operating with half power. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“How—”  _ Are you even alive?  _ Andrew doesn’t say it. He can’t ask  _ how are you here? Why didn’t you die? You should have died. The tek, the magic. You should have died. _

Neil knows anyway. “That was stupid of all of you. A bomb?”

“It was not a bomb.”

“Tek bomb, same thing,” Neil murmurs. He closes his eyes. “Kevin could have died.”

_ I was going to knock him out and leave him far behind, _ Andrew doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that he was interrupted before he could, that the Butcher’s people were more numerous than Andrew had anticipated.

“He didn’t,” Andrew says. “We had a failsafe, anyway.”

“What? Backup generator?” Neil hums, falsely amused. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It does matter. You should—”

“—should have told you? I did.”

He’s right. He is very right and Andrew hates it. All the threads are tangled and he can’t move the way he wants; every time he reaches out he ends up hitting something, someone. He is trying to find Neil’s hand but ends up slapping it away.

Nathaniel opens his eyes. “Why are you here?”

Andrew almost draws back. He can feel the shift as much as he sees it, Neil sliding away and Nathaniel stepping forward, a sharp definition taking over once-soft features. The blue eyes staring at Andrew are more ice than ocean, crystalline in their hardness.

“No,” Andrew says, without any intention of saying it in the first place. Nathaniel blinks. “I am not talking to Nathaniel. I don’t know him.”

“Yes, you do,” Nathaniel says. There’s a bitter edge to his smile. “Neil isn’t real. It’s only—”

“He is,” Andrew says, narrowing his eyes as he leans closer. “I kissed him.”

The blue eyes before Andrew go comically wide, brows furrowed and an expression of utter bewilderment taking over Neil’s face. He shakes his head once, squints, mouth working soundlessly as he stares up at Andrew.

“What—how does that—”

“If you can touch it, it’s real,” Andrew says. It sounds lame to his own ears, but he feels like he’s vomiting words. He can’t hold them behind his teeth. “I don’t need dramatics. I don’t need to be protected. But you—do you even want to stay?”

“Yes,” Neil says, immediate and tinged with desperation. His fingers curl into the pillows on either side of him, sheets quietly scrunching as if drawn into the reply. “Yes, I do—”

“Then do,” Andrew says. “Stay.”

♅

Seth is tired of the foxhole sounding like death. He wakes up the fourth day after Neil’s rescue and throws the sheets off his body, disgruntled. At the back of his mind, he’s aware that Allison and Renee are in the guest house at the back and probably haven’t changed much from their daily routine; Nicky is probably spending his time talking to Erik, Aaron is sleeping after working on Neil, Andrew is with Neil. Wymack is probably devising new ways to put everyone under house arrest.

Basically everyone is preoccupied with leaving Neil alone for a while. Seth is sick of the silence, though, and he’s faintly certain that if Neil realized everyone else was walking on eggshells, he’d be annoyed. So Seth throws on his running leggings and a t-shirt, walks to the window to check the weather, and thinks about how many ways he can make some noise that don’t involve getting into a fight.

Seth looks out the window and immediately gets an eyeful of Kevin’s stomach.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Seth says. He doesn’t mean to open his mouth and voice his thoughts, but it happens, and he blinks while his brain attempts to process what he’s seeing. Kevin is climbing down the side of the house, probably from wherever his bedroom window is, and he is wearing track shorts, a t-shirt, and a jacket. He seems focused until he lowers himself another foot and comes eye-to-eye with Seth.

Kevin’s eyes widen and dart away. Seth can practically see him swallow nervously.  Seth crosses his arms over his chest and tries not to laugh, gesturing to the window. Kevin nods sharply and Seth swings his window open, taking care to avoid hitting Kevin.

“So. What are you doing, buddy?”

Kevin’s brow furrows in annoyance, probably because Seth said  _ buddy _ . “I go running every morning. Remember—”

“Yeah, I do,” Seth cuts him off, unable to keep the amusement from his voice. “But why are you climbing down the side of the fucking house, you psycho?”

“The stairs creak,” Kevin snaps, aggravated. This early in the morning, his hair is still messy from sleep and his manners are clearly not even remotely functioning.

Seth laughs. He laughs so hard he snorts and has to wipe at the tears in his eyes. Kevin hangs outside the window, uncertain, looking like he’s not sure whether he should be laughing too or not.

“Yeah, sure,” Seth finally replies, sighing fondly. “Get your ass in here. Noise isn’t going to kill Neil.”

“But—”

“If he finds out you were scaling the house, he’s going to kill you.”

It takes a few minutes, but Kevin finally swings his leg over the windowsill and ducks into Seth’s room. Seth takes an armband from his bedside table and straps his phone to his arm, adjusting the implant behind his ear for the music he wants to listen to.

Kevin awkwardly shifts his weight between his feet. He glances at Seth and looks like he’s going to ask something, maybe about what’s next or what to do. Seth tilts his head toward the door. “I need to stretch my legs. One hour?”

“Yeah,” Kevin says. Some of the tension leaves his body, like he’s more comfortable talking about exercise than having to casually interact with Seth. “Sounds good.”

They leave the foxhole and make their way around the block. Kevin seems to be heading for a trail, so Seth follows him and forgets about anything else. It’s surreal to see the world turning outside, clouds moving across the sky and sunlight breaking the cover of nearby trees. There are even other people out and about, people with dogs and children and regular human problems.

Somewhere halfway along their route, a man on a bicycle speeds past Kevin and he lurches into Seth. They end up hopping awkwardly off the path, Seth barely catching Kevin before they fall down the side of the path and into the steep ditch beside them.

Seth frowns, hands on Kevin’s arms, guiding them toward even ground. “You okay?” 

What Seth didn’t expect was to find Kevin staring at the ground, tears biting at his eyes. Seth makes a surprised noise, glancing over Kevin, expecting to find an injury because nothing else could explain the tears. Seth shakes his head and says, “Hey. What—”

“I didn’t see,” Kevin says, angry.

“Yeah, neither did I—”

“How did I not—I mean, what am I, blind?” Kevin snarls. He throws his hands up and Seth leans back to avoid being accidentally hit. “How—”

“We’re not talking about that,” Seth says, pointing over his shoulder toward the biker. “You get that, right?”

Kevin ignores him. “What fucking use is all the shit I have if it’s not going to help?”

“Oh, hot. Swearing.”

It seems like something Seth said struck a chord; Kevin’s eyes narrow distrustfully and he looks at Seth, cheeks coloring more than just from running. “What?”

Seth sighs. “Jokes aside, you’re not omniscient. You wouldn’t have known that Neil was the missing test model, or that his father was the Butcher, or that people would come looking for him. Even if you suspected or guessed, it doesn’t matter. One person can’t have that much power.”

“I’m supposed to!” Kevin shouts. It’s the first time Seth has seen him even remotely distressed or agitated to this degree, especially in public. He’s enjoying it not for the distress, but for the bare emotion that comes through It’s more than Seth ever expected.

“Who says?” Seth asks, amused. “You’re not entirely robot, remember? You’re still mostly human. You can’t expect to be perfect. You shouldn’t want to be.”

“Why not? I am supposed to be perfect,” Kevin snaps. “That was the point. If I’m not, what was the fucking point?”

“Maybe the point is that you’re alive, you’re different, and you being different is what helped save Neil. Save all the others. You gave Andrew a home, Kevin. You gave everyone a home, even if some of us didn’t really stick around to appreciate it for long.”

Kevin blinks. His blush seems to worsen and it’s distracting Seth from the point he’s trying to make. “No,” Kevin says. “It wasn’t your problem to deal with. You didn’t have to stay.”

“Sure, but I also didn’t have to wreck shit and storm off. I was a fucking child,” Seth says, shrugging. “I’m sorry.”

There’s a beat of silence that lasts far too long. Kevin bites at his lip and finally says, “You’re not...joking. Right?”

“What? No.” Seth snorts. “Man, how did I end up ahead of you?”

“What? In what way?” Kevin asks, indignant.

Seth just laughs. “It’s a good thing I’m back. I’ll have time to teach you what I had to figure out on my own. You’re lucky, you know!” Seth starts to jog back to the trail, turning to walk backwards after a few feet. “I’m much more patient now! And I’ll make learning fun.”

♅

Andrew is in the shower when Aaron wakes from his two-day nap. He pulls on an old sweater, too large, probably from Seth’s apartment. Neil hacked at the collar when he wore it and the soft, ragged edge tickles Aaron’s neck. It smells like home and the electric candle Seth used to leave burning in his apartment when he was gone for days.

The foxhole is no longer ground zero; there is life within its walls again, people moving and the occasional smell of breakfast wafting up the stairs. Aaron can smell waffles as he leaves his room, turning the doorknob so he won’t make noise. He takes the stairs down and pointedly does not look toward the kitchen or the living room. His eyes are focused solely on the door at the back of the house and the reminder that Neil should be fine. As fine as he could be.

Aaron presses the door open with his palm like he’s feeling for heat. It’s cool to the touch, old wood familiar against his skin. He leaves the door slightly ajar and winds his way around curtains and toward the bed at the back.

Neil is sitting upright; Aaron feels a tiny prick of surprise, a tinier prick of jealousy. He’s aware that he is not really jealous that Andrew helped Neil change his clothes, or that Andrew was at Neil’s side for the past two days. It’s just the echo of jealousy he feels that comes with being the only one. The only one Neil trusted, the only one that knew him, the only one that cared.

It’s not a bad thing that they are at the foxhole, that Aaron is back, and that is a difficult thing to recognize.

“Are you mad?” Neil looks up from the bed. There are new fissures under his eye, little jagged cracks where Lola drove a bio-tool into his cheekbone like she wanted to gouge his eye out. Blue magic pulses softly through the thin lines.

Aaron’s throat tightens to a pinhole. “No. No, I’m not fucking mad.”

“You said fucking.”

“Shut up.” He says the two words breathlessly, at a loss, incapable of forming the syllables and consonants that can explain to Neil how it’s not his fault. Aaron shuts his eyes and shakes his head, dislodges the thorn biting at his tongue. “I’m not mad. I’m just—”

“Don’t say disappointed,” Neil murmurs. “You’ll be my new dad.”

It’s a joke he shouldn’t make. It also shouldn’t be painful; it’s just a cliche, a tired old thing, an innocuous comparison. Neil should be able to make jokes about fathers without remembering how his own father amputated him and strapped him to a table.

“None of this is right,” Aaron whispers. “I knew. I really knew what you were. I should never have let you—”

“Let me?” There’s a tiny flicker in Neil’s eyes, sparks spluttering to life. Magic, tek. “No one lets me do anything. I am not a pet. I am not property.”

“No. You’re not.”

“It was my choice,” Neil says, quieter. “I made it and it’s done. Now everyone knows.”

Aaron swallows. He has to say it. “You know there’s no way they’ll let you help now.”

Neil smiles slowly, the corners of his mouth jagged. He should not be so confident, should not be so ready to fight. It hurts as much as it makes Aaron proud, makes him want to stand by Neil’s side and cut down anyone who gets in his way.

“No one lets me do anything,” Neil says again, calm and even, and Aaron thinks that maybe Nathaniel was always with them, in a way. Always with Neil. “I am Neil, and I am going to kill a Moriyama.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he yy y  
> i am so sorry for the hiatus, it's been a fucking month  
> as from now on, it's once a week updates! we have about 3-4 chapters left to go, YOOP  
> also i'm doing the big bang this year and i am probably going to go for 25k minimum so look forward to that mess


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